


Sherlock of Green Gables

by ChrisCalledMeSweetie



Series: Children's Classics with a Johnlock Twist [26]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Late 1800s Canada, Closeted Mystrade, Crossdressing, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Established Mystrade, Eventual Johnlock, Humor, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-05-31 14:38:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 51,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15121577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChrisCalledMeSweetie/pseuds/ChrisCalledMeSweetie
Summary: Mycroft Holmes and Greg Lestrade, confirmed bachelors who have recently moved to Avonlea, decide to adopt an orphan girl to help with the housework, rather than hiring someone local, who might be tempted to carry tales back to the village about how many beds were — or were not — slept in. However, the hand of fate steps in to deliver them a boy, instead. Since Sherlock could just as easily be a girl’s name, they decide to keep the child, and pass him off as a girl. Little do they know just how much trouble — and joy — Sherlock will bring into their lives.





	1. Sally Donovan is Surprised

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GobletCharm74](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GobletCharm74/gifts), [Herbie851](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herbie851/gifts), [lijahlover](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lijahlover/gifts), [Stavia_Scott_Grayson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stavia_Scott_Grayson/gifts), [egmon73](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egmon73/gifts).



> This story is a collaboration between myself and the ghost of L. M. Montgomery, with the latter contributing most of the work, and the former contributing all of the Johnlock and Mystrade romance.

Mrs. Sally Donovan lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place, recently purchased by two confirmed bachelors, Mr. Mycroft Holmes and Mr. Greg Lestrade; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Donovan’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Sally Donovan’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Sally was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.

There are plenty of people, in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbour’s business by dint of neglecting their own; but Sally Donovan was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. Her work was always done and well done, yet Sally found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the gauntlet of Sally’s all-seeing eye.

She was sitting there at the window one afternoon in early June. Thomas Donovan — a meek little man whom Avonlea people called “Sally Donovan’s husband” — was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Greg Lestrade ought to have been sowing his on the field away over by Green Gables. And yet here was Greg Lestrade, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Greg Lestrade going and why was he going there?

Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Sally, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Greg so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him. To see him dressed up with a white collar, and driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen often. Sally, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it, and her afternoon’s enjoyment was spoiled.

“I’ll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Mycroft where he’s gone and why,” the worthy woman finally concluded. “He doesn’t generally go to town this time of year; if he’d run out of turnip seed he wouldn’t dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn’t driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I’m clean puzzled, that’s what, and I won’t know a minute’s peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Greg Lestrade out of Avonlea today.”

Accordingly, after tea Sally set out. She had not far to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lestrade lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Donovan’s Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. The house’s original owners, the Cuthberts, had got as far away as they possibly could from their fellow men, without actually retreating into the woods, when they founded their homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of the cleared land, and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Sally Donovan did not call living in such a place living at all.

“It’s just staying, that’s what,” she said, as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. “It’s no wonder Greg and Mycroft are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren’t much company, though dear knows if they were there’d be enough of them. I’d rather look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they’re used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as someone once said.”

With this, Sally stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardy pines. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Sally would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Mycroft Holmes kept that yard as neat as he kept his house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without over-brimming the proverbial peck of dirt.

Sally rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful apartment — or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlour. Its windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the orchard, and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook, was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Mycroft Holmes, when he sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to him too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously; and here he sat now, with the table behind him laid for supper.

Sally, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid, so Mycroft must be expecting someone home with Greg to tea; but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserve and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any particularly grand company. Yet what of Greg’s white collar and the sorrel mare? Sally was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet, heretofore un-mysterious Green Gables.

“Good evening, Sally,” Mycroft said briskly. “This is a fine evening, isn’t it? Won’t you sit down? How are you?”

“Thomas and I are pretty well,” said Sally. “I was afraid you weren’t, though, when I saw Greg starting off today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor’s.”

Mycroft’s lips twitched understandingly. He had expected Sally to turn up; he had known that the sight of Greg jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for their neighbour’s curiosity.

“Oh, no, I’m quite well,” he said. “Greg went to Bright River. We’re getting a little girl from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and she’s coming on the train tonight.”

If Mycroft had said that Greg had gone to Bright River to meet a kangaroo from Australia, Sally could not have been more astonished. She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was not be be supposed that Mycroft was making fun of her, but Sally was almost forced to suppose it.

“Are you in earnest, Mycroft?” she demanded, when voice returned to her.

“Yes, of course,” said Mycroft, as if getting girls from orphan asylums in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated Avonlea farm, instead of being an unheard of innovation.

Sally felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A girl! Mycroft Holmes and Greg Lestrade, of all people, adopting a girl! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!

“What on earth put such a notion into your head?” she demanded disapprovingly.

This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be disapproved.

“Well, Greg and I have been thinking about it for some time,” returned Mycroft. “You know how desperately hard it’s become to get good hired help, so we’ve decided to adopt a girl to do the housekeeping. We wrote to the matron of the orphan asylum, requesting a smart girl of about ten or eleven. We decided that would be the best age — old enough to be of some use in doing chores right off and young enough to be trained up properly. We mean to give her a good home and schooling.

“We had a telegram from the matron of the asylum today — the mail-man brought it from the station — saying one of her most trusted employees, Miss Anthea, would be bringing our orphan on the five-thirty train tonight. So Greg went to Bright River to meet her. Miss Anthea will drop her off there before she continues on with another orphan she’s escorting.”

Sally prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece of news.

“Well, Mycroft, I’ll just tell you plain that I think you’re doing a mighty foolish thing — a risky thing, that’s what. You don’t know what you’re getting. You’re bringing a strange child into your house and home and you don’t know a single thing about her nor what her disposition is like nor what sort of parents she had nor how she’s likely to turn out. Why, I read in the paper how a man and his wife took a girl out of an orphan asylum and she put strychnine in the well. The whole family died in fearful agonies. And I know another case where an adopted girl used to suck the eggs — they couldn’t break her of it. If you had asked my advice in the matter — which you didn’t do, Mycroft — I’d have said for mercy’s sake not to think of such a thing, that’s what.”

This Job’s comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Mycroft.

“I don’t deny there’s something in what you say, Sally. I’ve had some qualms myself. But Greg was set on it. I could see that, so I gave in. It’s so seldom Greg sets his mind on anything that when he does I always feel it’s my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there are risks in nearly everything one does in this world. There are risks in people’s having children of their own if it comes to that — they don’t always turn out well.”

“Well, I hope it will turn out all right,” said Sally, in a tone that plainly indicated her painful doubts. “Only don’t say I didn’t warn you if she burns Green Gables down. I heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did that — he set fire to the house at night — set it on purpose, Mycroft — and nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds. Only, it was a boy in that instance.”

“Well, we’re not getting a boy,” said Mycroft, as if setting fires were a purely masculine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case of a girl.

Sally would have liked to stay until Greg came home with his imported orphan. But, reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his arrival, she decided to go up the road to Robert Bell’s and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second to none, and Sally dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took herself away, somewhat to Mycroft’s relief, for the latter felt his doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Sally’s pessimism.

“Well, of all things that ever were or will be!” exclaimed Sally, when she was safely out in the lane. “It does really seem as if I must be dreaming. Well, I’m sorry for that poor young one and no mistake. Greg and Mycroft don’t know anything about children, and they’ll expect her to be wiser and steadier that her own grandmother, if she’s ever had a grandmother, which is doubtful. I wouldn’t be in that orphan’s shoes for anything. My, but I pity her, that’s what.”

So said Sally to the wild rose bushes out of the fullness of her heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently at the Bright River station at that very moment, her pity would have been still deeper and more profound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will be updating this story every Sunday. Next week, Greg Lestrade is Surprised.
> 
> This is my entry in the 2018 Sherlock Sunday Summer Serial. My contribution to last year's Sherlock Sunday Summer Serial, [Southanger Abbey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885071), is now available as a [podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15058439) by Lockedinjohnlock. The first two chapters are up now, and she will be posting a new chapter every day in July. Lockedinjohnlock has done an amazing job bringing Southanger Abbey to life. Please go give her some love!
> 
> Kind comments and kudos make me smile. :)


	2. Greg Lestrade is Surprised

Greg Lestrade and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance. Greg enjoyed the drive, except during the moments when he met women and had to nod to them — for in Prince Edward Island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road whether you know them or not. Greg dreaded women; he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly plotting to catch him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he was a good-looking personage, with an imposing figure and a handsome face. He had hoped that, with age, his allure to the fairer sex would have worn off, but the silver that had crept into his hair upon his reaching his fortieth birthday had done nothing to diminish his attractiveness.

When Greg reached Bright River, there was no sign of the train, and the ticket office was deserted. The station master had left a note in the window, explaining that a family emergency had required him to leave at noon. Greg looked up and down the platform. The only living creature in sight was a boy who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end.

The boy had been watching Greg ever since he had passed by, and still had his eyes on him now. Greg, returning his scrutiny, saw a child of about eleven, garbed in a very tight, very ugly yellowish-grey shirt and very short blue trousers. He wore a faded brown sailor hat, and peeking out beneath the hat were wild, tangled curls. His face was white and thin, and a bit freckled; his lips were full and so were his eyes, which looked green or blue or grey, depending upon how the light hit them. Greg observed that the big eyes shone with spirit and vivacity, and concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray boy.

On catching Greg’s eye, the boy stood up, grasping with one thin hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag. He walked over and held his other hand out to shake.

“I suppose you are Mr. Greg Lestrade of Green Gables?” he said. “I’m very glad to see you. I was beginning to be afraid you weren’t coming for me, and I was deducing all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind that if you didn’t come for me tonight I’d go down the track to that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn’t be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don’t you think? And I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn’t tonight.”

Greg had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his. Oh no! he thought. There’s been some sort of horrible mix-up. He could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that there had been a mistake, however; he would take him home and let Mycroft do that. The boy couldn’t be left at Bright River anyhow, no matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.

“I’m sorry I was late,” Greg said. “Come along. The horse is over in the yard. Give me your bag.”

“Oh, I can carry it,” the child responded cheerfully. “It isn’t heavy. I’ve got all my worldly goods in it, but it isn’t heavy. And if it isn’t carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out — so I’d better keep it because I know the exact knack of it.

“I’m very glad you’ve come, even if it would have been nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We’ve got to drive a long piece, haven’t we? From some things I overheard Miss Anthea say, I’ve deduced it is eight miles. I’m glad, because I love driving.

“Oh, it seems so wonderful that I’m going to live with you and belong to you. I’ve never belonged to anybody — not really. I can tell by looking at you that you never were an orphan in an asylum, so you can’t possibly understand what it is like. It’s worse than anything you could imagine.

“Miss Anthea said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn’t mean to be wicked. It’s so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn’t it? They were good, you know — the asylum people. But there is so little scope for observation in an asylum — only just in the other orphans. It was pretty interesting to deduce things about them — but they didn’t like it, for some reason.”

With this Greg’s companion stopped talking, partly because he was out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another word did he say until they had left the village and were driving down a steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the soft soil, that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees and slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.

The child put out his hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that brushed against the side of the buggy.

“Isn’t that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank, all white and lacy, make you think of?” he asked.

“Well now, I don’t know,” said Greg.

“Why, a gentleman in a frilly white shirt. I do hope that some day I shall have a white shirt. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I just love fancy clothes. I’ve never had a fancy suit in my life — but of course it’s all the more to look forward to, isn’t it? And in my Mind Palace I can imagine that I’m dressed gorgeously.

“This morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear these horrid old wincey clothes. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the asylum. They said it was out of the kindness of his heart, but I deduced it was because he couldn’t sell it.

“When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk suit — because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while — and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I felt cheered up right away, and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my might.

“I wasn’t a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Miss Anthea, although I deduced she generally is. She said she hadn’t time to get sick, watching to see that I didn’t fall overboard. She said she never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from being seasick it’s a mercy I did prowl, isn’t it? And I wanted to see everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn’t know whether I’d ever have another opportunity.

“Oh, there are a lot more cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just love it already, and I’m so glad I’m going to live here. I’ve always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I would. It’s delightful when your imaginings come true, isn’t it?

“But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn’t talk? If you say so I’ll stop. I can stop when I make up my mind to it, although it’s difficult.”

Greg, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks, he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. So he said:

“Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don’t mind.”

“Oh, I’m so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together fine. It’s such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told that children should be seen and not heard. I’ve had that said to me a million times if I have once. And people call me a freak because I make deductions and use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?”

“Well now, that seems reasonable,” said Greg.

“Miss Anthea said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it isn’t — it’s firmly fastened at one end. Miss Anthea said your place was named Green Gables. I asked her whether there were trees around it, but she said she didn’t know. I just love trees, and there weren’t any at all about the asylum, only a few poor teeny-tiny things out in front with little whitewashed cages about them.

“They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, ‘Oh, you poor little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and little mosses and June bells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in your branches, you could grow, couldn’t you? But you can’t where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little trees.’ I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don’t you? Is there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Miss Anthea that.”

“Yes, there’s one right below the house.”

“Fancy. It’s always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I never expected I would, though. Dreams don’t often come true, do they? Wouldn’t it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly perfectly happy. I can’t feel exactly perfectly happy because — well, how would you describe my hair?”

He pulled off the sailor hat, revealing a tangled mess of curls.

“Well, it’s certainly curly, isn’t it?” Greg said.

The boy let the hat drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from his very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.

“Yes, it’s curly,” he said resignedly. “Now you see why I can’t be perfectly happy. Nobody could who has curly hair. I don’t mind the other things so much — the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. In my Mind Palace, I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I cannot imagine those curls away. They will be my lifelong sorrow.

“I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn’t curly hair. Her hair was like spun gold falling from her alabaster brow. What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Greg, who was getting a little dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.

“Well, whatever it was, it must have been something nice, because she was divinely beautiful. I’ve often imagined what it must feel like to be divinely beautiful. Which would you rather be if you had the choice — divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?”

“Well now, I — I don’t know exactly.”

“Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn’t make much real difference for it isn’t likely I’ll ever be any of them. It’s certain I’ll never be angelically good. Miss Anthea says — oh, Mr. Lestrade! Oh, Mr. Lestrade!! Oh, Mr. Lestrade!!!”

That was not what Miss Anthea had said; neither had the child tumbled out of the buggy nor had Greg done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the “Avenue.”

The “Avenue,” so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.

Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. He leaned back in the buggy, his thin hands clasped before him, his face lifted rapturously to the white splendour above. Even when they had passed out, and were driving down the long slope to Newbridge, he never moved or spoke. Still with rapt face he gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence.

When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken. He could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as he could talk.

“I guess you’re feeling pretty tired and hungry,” Greg ventured to say at last, accounting for his long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of. “But we haven’t very far to go now — only another mile.”

The boy came out of his reverie with a deep sigh and looked at Greg with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.

“Oh, Mr. Lestrade,” he whispered, “that place we came through — that white place — what was it?”

“Well now, you must mean the Avenue,” said Greg after a few moments’ profound reflection. “It is a pretty place.”

“Pretty? Oh, pretty doesn’t seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don’t go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful — wonderful. It’s the first thing I ever saw that couldn’t be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here” — he put one hand on his chest — “it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Lestrade?”

Greg thought of the feeling he got when he looked at Mycroft. He knew he couldn’t mention such a thing to this child.

“Well now, I just can’t recollect that I ever had,” he said.

“I have it lots of time — whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But they shouldn’t call that lovely place the Avenue. They should call it the White Way of Delight. Isn’t that a nice imaginative name? When I don’t like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of them so. Other people may call that place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight.

“Have we really only another mile to go before we get home? I’m glad and I’m sorry. I’m sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I’m always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure. And it’s so often the case that it isn’t pleasanter. That has been my experience anyhow. But I’m glad to think of getting home. You see, I’ve never had a real home since I can remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly home. Oh, isn’t that pretty!”

They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway, and from there to its lower end the water was a glory of many shifting hues. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. There was a little grey house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond, and although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from one of its windows.

“That’s Hooper’s pond,” said Greg.

“Oh, I don’t like that name, either. I shall call it the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?”

Greg thought again of Mycroft, but that thought was even less fit to share with this child. After ruminating for a bit, he said,

“Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see those ugly white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of them.”

“Oh, I don’t think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill. Do you think it can? There doesn’t seem to be much connection between grubs and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it Hooper’s pond?”

“Because the Hooper family lives up there in that house. Orchard Slope’s the name of their place. If it wasn’t for that big bush behind it you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the bridge and round by the road, so it’s nearly half a mile further. The Hoopers have a daughter about your age. Her name is Molly.”

“Oh!” with a long in-drawing of breath. “What a perfectly lovely name!”

When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner, Greg said: “We’re pretty near home now. That’s Green Gables over —”

“Oh, don’t tell me,” the child interrupted breathlessly, catching at Greg’s partially raised arm and shutting his eyes that he might not see his gesture. “Let me deduce. I’m sure I’ll get it right.”

He opened his eyes and looked about him. They were on the crest of a hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long, gently-rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one to another the child’s eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said, pointing.

Greg slapped the reins on the sorrel’s back delightedly.

“Well now, you’ve guessed it! But I reckon Miss Anthea described it so you could tell.”

“No, she didn’t — really she didn’t. I hadn’t any real idea what it looked like. But I put together all the bits and pieces of what she did say, and deduced which house it must be. Just as soon as I saw it, I felt it was home.

“Oh, it seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and blue from the elbow up, for I’ve pinched myself so many times today. Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and I’d be so afraid it was all just in my Mind Palace. Then I’d pinch myself to see if it was real. But it is real and we’re nearly home.”

With a sigh of rapture he relapsed into silence. Greg stirred uneasily. He felt glad that it would be Mycroft and not he who would have to tell this waif of the world that the home he longed for was not to be his after all.

They drove over Donovan’s Hollow, where it was already quite dark, but not so dark that Sally could not see the outline of the buggy from her window vantage, and up the hill and into the long lane of Green Gables. By the time they arrived at the house, Greg was shrinking from the approaching revelation with an energy he did not understand. It was not of Mycroft or himself he was thinking, or of the trouble this mistake was probably going to make for them, but of the child’s disappointment. When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in the boy’s eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something — much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.

The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves were rustling silkily all round it.

“Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,” the boy whispered, as Greg lifted him to the ground. “What nice dreams they must have!”

Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained all his worldly goods, he followed Greg into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think will happen when Mycroft discovers the mistake? Find out next week, when Mycroft Holmes is Surprised.


	3. Mycroft Holmes is Surprised

Mycroft came briskly forward as Greg opened the door. But when his eyes fell on the odd little figure in the stiff, ugly clothes, he stopped short in amazement.

 

“Greg Lestrade, who is that?” he demanded. “Where is the girl?”

 

“There wasn’t any girl,” said Greg wretchedly. “There was only _him_.”

 

He nodded at the child, remembering that he had never even asked his name.

 

“No girl! But there _must_ have been a girl,” insisted Mycroft. “We sent word to the orphan asylum to send a girl.”

 

“Well, they didn’t. They sent _him_. And I had to bring him home. He couldn’t be left there, no matter where the mistake had come in.”

 

“Well, this is a pretty piece of business!” said Mycroft.

 

During this dialogue the child had remained silent, his eyes roving from one to the other, all the animation fading out of his face. Suddenly he seemed to grasp the full meaning of what had been said. Dropping his precious carpet-bag he sprang forward a step and clasped his hands.

 

“You don’t want me!” he cried. “You don’t want me because I’m not a girl! I should have deduced it. Nobody ever did want me. I should have known it was all too beautiful to last. I should have known nobody really did want me. But I was so excited, I failed to observe. Oh, what shall I do? I’m going to burst into tears!”

 

Burst into tears he did. Sitting down on a chair by the table, flinging his arms out upon it, and burying his face in them, he proceeded to cry stormily. 

 

Mycroft and Greg looked at each other across the stove. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Mycroft stepped lamely into the breach.

 

“Well, well, there’s no need to cry so about it.”

 

“Yes, there _is_ need!” The child raised his head quickly, revealing a tear-stained face and trembling lips. “ _You_ would cry, too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn’t want you because you weren’t a girl. Oh, this is the most _tragical_ thing that ever happened to me!”

 

Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse, mellowed Mycroft’s grim expression.

 

“Well, don’t cry any more. We’re not going to turn you out-of-doors tonight. You’ll have to stay here until we investigate this affair. What’s your name?”

 

The child hesitated for a moment.

 

“Will you please call me Sherlock?” he said eagerly.

 

“ _Call_ you Sherlock? Is that your name?”

 

“It’s _one_ of my names.”

 

“What is your full name?”

 

“William Sherlock Scott,” reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name. “But — oh, please do call me Sherlock. It can’t matter much to you what you call me if I’m only going to be here a little while, can it? And William is such a boring name.”

 

“Nonsense!” said the unsympathetic Mycroft. “William is a good, plain, sensible name. You’ve no need to be ashamed of it.”

 

“Oh, I’m not ashamed of it,” explained Sherlock, “only I like Sherlock better. And it _is_ my real name, only it comes in the middle. _Please_ call me Sherlock.”

 

“Very well, then, Sherlock, can you tell us how this mistake came to be made? We sent word to the asylum to send us a girl. Were there no more girls at the asylum?”

 

“Oh, yes — an abundance of them. But the matron said _distinctly_ that you wanted a boy about eleven years old. And Miss Anthea said she thought I would do. You don’t know how delighted I was. I couldn’t sleep all last night for joy.”

 

“Oh,” he added reproachfully, turning to Greg, “why didn’t you tell me at the station that you didn’t want me, and leave me there? If I hadn’t seen the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters it wouldn’t be so hard.”

 

“What on earth does he mean?” demanded Mycroft, staring at Greg.

 

“He’s just referring to some conversation we had on the road,” said Greg hastily. “I’m going out to put the mare in, Mycroft.”

 

“Did Miss Anthea bring anybody over besides you?” continued Mycroft when Greg had gone out.

 

“She brought Lily Jones for a family in Tyne Valley. Lily is only five years old and she is very beautiful and has straight hair. If I had straight hair would you keep me?”

 

“No. We want a girl to do the housekeeping. A boy would be of no use to us. Take off your hat. I’ll lay it and your bag on the hall table.”

 

Sherlock took off his hat meekly. Greg came back presently and they sat down to supper. But Sherlock could not eat. In vain he nibbled at the bread and butter and picked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little scalloped glass dish by his plate. He did not really make any headway at all.

 

“You’re not eating anything,” said Mycroft sharply, eying him as if it were a serious shortcoming. 

 

Sherlock sighed. “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”

 

“I’ve never been in the depths of despair, so I can’t say,” responded Mycroft.

 

“Weren’t you? Well, did you ever try to _imagine_ you were in the depths of despair?”

 

“No, I didn’t.”

 

“Then I don’t think you can understand what it’s like. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you can’t swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel. I had a chocolate caramel once two years ago and it was simply delicious. I saved it in my Mind Palace, and I often visit the pantry where it’s kept. I do hope you won’t be offended because I can’t eat. Everything is extremely nice, but still I cannot eat.”

 

“I guess he’s tired,” said Greg, who hadn’t spoken since his return from the barn. “Best put him to bed, Mycroft.”

 

Mycroft lighted a candle and told Sherlock to follow him, which Sherlock spiritlessly did, taking his hat and carpet-bag from the hall table as he passed. The hall was fearsomely clean; the little gable chamber in which he presently found himself seemed still cleaner.

 

Mycroft set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and turned down the bedclothes.

 

“I suppose you have a nightshirt?” he questioned.

 

Sherlock nodded.

 

“Yes, I have two. The matron of the asylum made them for me. They’re fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an asylum, so things are always skimpy — at least in a poor asylum like ours. I hate skimpy nightshirts. But one can dream just as well in them as in lovely trailing ones, with frills around the neck, that’s one consolation.”

 

“Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I’ll come back in a few minutes for the candle. I daren’t trust you to put it out yourself. You’d likely set the place on fire.”

 

When Mycroft had gone, Sherlock looked around him wistfully. The whitewashed walls were so painfully bare and staring that he thought they must ache over their own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a round braided mat in the middle such as Sherlock had never seen before. In one corner was the bed, a high, old-fashioned one, with four dark, low-turned posts. In the other corner was the aforesaid three-corner table, adorned with a fat red velvet pin-cushion hard enough to turn the point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a little six-by-eight mirror. Midway between table and bed was the window, with an icy white muslin frill over it, and opposite it was the wash-stand. 

 

The whole apartment was of a rigidity not to be described in words, but which sent a shiver to the very marrow of Sherlock’s bones. With a sob he hastily discarded his garments, put on the skimpy nightshirt and sprang into bed, where he burrowed face downward into the pillow and pulled the bedclothes over his head. 

 

When Mycroft came up for the light, various skimpy articles of raiment scattered most untidily over the floor and a certain tempestuous appearance of the bed were the only indications of any presence save his own. He deliberately picked up Sherlock’s clothes, placed them neatly on a prim yellow chair, and then, taking up the candle, went over to the bed.

 

“Good night,” he said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly.

 

Sherlock’s white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a startling suddenness.

 

“How can you call it a _good_ night when you know it must be the very worst night I’ve ever had?” he said reproachfully.

 

Then he dived down into invisibility again.

 

Mycroft went slowly down to the kitchen, where Greg was washing the supper dishes. 

 

“Well, this is a fine kettle of fish,” Mycroft said wrathfully. “This is what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. We’ll have to send a telegram to Miss Anthea tomorrow, that’s certain. This boy will have to be sent back to the asylum.”

 

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Greg reluctantly.

 

“You _suppose_ so! Don’t you know it?”

 

“Well now, he’s a real nice little thing, Mycroft. It’s kind of a pity to send him back when he’s so set on staying here.”

 

“Greg Lestrade, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep him!”

 

Mycroft’s astonishment could not have been greater if Greg had expressed a predilection for standing on his head.

 

“Well, now, no, I suppose not — not exactly,” stammered Greg, uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. “I suppose — we could hardly be expected to keep him.”

 

“I should say not. What good would he be to us?”

 

“We might be some good to _him_ ,” said Greg suddenly and unexpectedly.

 

“Greg Lestrade, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as plain as plain that you want to keep him.”

 

“Well, he’s an interesting little thing,” persisted Greg. “You should have heard him talk coming from the station.”

 

“Oh, he can talk fast enough. I noticed that at once. It’s nothing in his favour, though. I don’t like children who have so much to say. I don’t want a boy, and if I did he isn’t the style I’d pick out. There’s something odd about him. No, he’s got to be dispatched straightaway back to where he came from, and exchanged for a girl.”

 

“We could hire a girl from the village to help with the housework.” 

 

“We’ve discussed this, Greg. We cannot afford to have some local girl carrying tales back to the village about how many beds have — or have not — been slept in. That last one we hired was too inquisitive by half. No, an orphan girl is what we need.  Someone who is completely dependent on us, and so won’t talk out of turn.  Someone with no connections on the island, so even if she does venture to say anything, there will be no one to pay her any heed.”

 

“It’s just as you say, of course, Mycroft,” said Greg rising. “I’m going to bed.”

 

To bed went Greg. And to bed Mycroft followed him, frowning most resolutely. 

 

And upstairs, in the east gable, a lonely, heart-hungry, friendless child cried himself to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who do you think will get his own way, Mycroft or Greg? Find out next Sunday, when Sherlock is Surprised - and Surprising.
> 
> In the meantime, if you haven't yet read [The Defenestration of Rosie Watson-Holmes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231618) you might want to check it out.


	4. Sherlock is Surprised - and Surprising

It was broad daylight when Sherlock awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky. For a moment he could not remember where he was. First came a delightful thrill, as of something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn’t want him because he wasn’t a girl!

 

But it was morning, and yes, it was a cherry tree in full bloom outside of his window. With a bound he was out of bed and across the floor. He pushed up the sash — it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn’t been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up.

 

Sherlock dropped on his knees and gazed out into the June morning, his eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Wasn’t it a lovely place? He would commit the sight to his Mind Palace. He would imagine he was really going to stay. There was scope for imagination here.

 

On either side of the house was a big orchard, one of apple trees and one of cherry trees, showered over with blossoms. In the garden below were lilac bushes, purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind. Below the garden, a field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew. Beyond it was a hill, green with spruce and fir; there was a gap where the grey gable end of the little house he had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.

 

Sherlock’s beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. He had looked on mostly unlovely places in his life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything he had ever dreamed.

 

He knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around him, until he was startled by a hand on his shoulder. Mycroft had come in unheard by the small dreamer.

 

“It’s time you were dressed,” he said curtly.

 

Mycroft really did not know how to talk to the child, and his uncomfortable ignorance made him crisp and curt when he did not mean to be.

 

Sherlock stood up and drew a long breath.

 

“Oh, isn’t it wonderful?” he said, waving his hand comprehensively at the world outside. “I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They’re always laughing. I’m so glad there’s a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn’t make any difference to me, when you’re not going to keep me, but it does. 

 

“I’m not in the depths of despair this morning, but I do feel very sad. I’ve just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all, and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop, and that hurts. Still, I’ve added this garden to the grounds of my Mind Palace, so I’ll always be able to visit it.”

 

“You’d better get dressed and come downstairs and never mind your imaginings,” said Mycroft, as soon as he could get a word in edgewise. “Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as quick as you can.”

 

Sherlock could evidently be quick to some purpose, for he was downstairs in ten minutes’ time, with his clothes neatly on, his hair tamed as well as he could manage, his face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading his soul that he had fulfilled all Mycroft’s requirements. As a matter of fact, however, he had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.

 

“I’m pretty hungry this morning,” Sherlock announced as he slipped into the chair Mycroft placed for him. “The world doesn’t seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don’t you think? You don’t know what’s going to happen through the day, and there’s so much scope for observation. But I’m glad it’s not rainy today because it’s easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”

 

“For pity’s sake hold your tongue,” said Mycroft. “You talk entirely too much for a little boy.”

 

Thereupon Sherlock held his tongue so obediently and thoroughly that his continued silence made Mycroft rather uncomfortable, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural. Greg also held his tongue, so that the meal was a very silent one.

 

As it progressed, Sherlock became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with his big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Mycroft more uncomfortable than ever; he had a feeling that while this odd child’s body might be there at the table, his spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such a child about the place?

 

Yet Greg wished to keep him, of all unaccountable things! Mycroft could tell that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Greg’s way — take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency — a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out.

 

Mycroft turned in vexation to Sherlock. “What’s to be done with you I don’t know. Greg is a most ridiculous man.”

 

Sherlock came out of his reverie at this address. “I think he’s lovely,” he said reproachfully. “He is so very sympathetic. He doesn’t mind how much I talk — he seems to like it. I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.”

 

“Yes, well, kindred spirit or not, he must understand it’s a _girl_ we need about the house. Someone to do the cooking and cleaning.”

 

“I’m sure I could learn to cook and clean as well as any girl.”

 

Greg looked up hopefully at this. “He’s a clever boy, Mycroft. I’m sure he could learn.”

 

“Cleverness is not the issue, as you are well aware,” Mycroft responded, giving Greg a significant look. “What would people say, knowing two middle-aged bachelors had adopted a young boy? We’re trying to _avoid_ malicious gossip, not inspire it. There’ll be talk enough about adopting a girl — but at least in that case everyone expects us to need a female about the house to do what is commonly known as ‘women’s work.’ What possible excuse could we have for taking in an orphan boy?” 

 

Greg said nothing, and only looked wistfully at Sherlock.

 

The child gazed back at him in mute entreaty for some time before blurting out, “Sherlock is a girl’s name!”

 

“What fresh nonsense is this?” demanded Mycroft.

 

“Sherlock is a girl’s name,” the child insisted. “I’m sure you’ve never heard of a boy called Sherlock.”

 

“I’m sure I’ve never heard of _anyone_ called Sherlock.”

 

“Well, see, there you have it. Sherlock could just as easily be a girl’s name as a boy’s.”

 

“It _could_ ,” allowed Mycroft. “But in this case it _isn’t_.”

 

“But who’s to know that, except us? No one saw me arrive at the station, and no one has seen me since, except the two of you. For all anyone else knows, you sent for a girl, and one arrived.”

 

“What exactly are you proposing?” asked Mycroft. “Are we to keep you shut away in this house, hidden away from all the neighbours?”

 

“No — you’ll just have to dress me as a girl, and then I can go about as freely as I like.” 

 

“Dress you as a girl? You mean you’d pretend to be a girl every time you went out of the house?”

 

“Yes. I’m a very good actor.”

 

“That could work,” said Greg, breaking his long silence.

 

Mycroft gave him a hard look. “No, it couldn’t.  He’d have to dress as a girl all the time, in case any of the neighbours stopped by. Surely going back to the orphan asylum wouldn’t be as bad as that.”

 

“Nothing could be worse than the orphan asylum,” said Sherlock, his eyes welling up with tears.

 

Pity for the child stirred in Mycroft’s heart. What a starved, unloved life he must have led — a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for Mycroft was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Sherlock’s words and divine the truth. No wonder he had been so delighted at the prospect of a real home. 

 

Mycroft softened at the sight of the child’s pale face with its look of misery — the misery of a helpless little creature who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped. He felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if he denied the appeal of that look, it would haunt him to his dying day.

 

“I suppose we could consider it,” Mycroft said at last.

 

At these words, a sunrise dawned on Sherlock’s face. First the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope; his eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. 

 

“Oh, Mr. Holmes, did you really just say that perhaps you would let me stay at Green Gables?” Sherlock said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. “Did you really say it? Or did I only imagine that you did?”

 

“I think you’d better learn to control that imagination of yours, Sherlock, if you can’t distinguish between what is real and what isn’t,” said Mycroft crossly. “Yes, you did hear me say we would _consider_ it, and no more. It isn’t decided yet. Greg and I will have to talk it over, and you will have to think long and hard about whether you’re willing to spend your life dressed as a girl, and doing all the work a girl would be expected to do.” 

 

“I’ll try to do and be anything you want me to, if you’ll only keep me,” promised Sherlock.

 

“We’ll see,” said Mycroft. “I’ll start you off washing the breakfast dishes. Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well.”

 

 Sherlock washed the dishes deftly enough, as Mycroft, who kept a sharp eye on the process, discerned. Later on he made his bed less successfully, for he had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But it was done somehow, and smoothed down; and then Mycroft, to get rid of him, told him he might go out-of-doors and amuse himself until dinner time.

 

Sherlock flew out the door, face alight, eyes glowing.

 

“I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal that child,” muttered Mycroft to himself. “He is certainly interesting, as Greg says. I’m already wondering what on earth he’ll say next. He’ll be casting a spell over me, too, just as he’s cast one over Greg. Well, I’d better go discuss it with him, though I know exactly what he’ll say.” 

 

Mycroft found Greg out in the turnip field, catching up on the planting. He paused in his work as Mycroft approached.

 

“I’ve been thinking it over,” Greg said, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that Fate sent us that little boy. He’s come up with the perfect solution to our problem. We’ll get all the benefits of a girl — help with the housekeeping from someone acceptable in the eyes of the village — without any of the difficulties. Because really, Mycroft, what would we know about raising a girl? We’ll do a much better job with a boy, I’m sure.”

 

“Well, since you want him, I suppose I’m willing — or have to be. It seems a sort of duty. So far as I’m concerned, Greg, he may stay.”

 

Greg’s face was a glow of delight. “I knew you’d come to see it in that light, Mycroft,” he said, looking around to make sure they were unobserved before giving him a quick kiss. “Sherlock’s such an interesting little thing.”

 

“It would be more to the point if you could say he was a useful little thing,” retorted Mycroft, “but I’ll make it my business to see he’s trained to be that. And mind, Greg, you’re not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps I don’t know much about bringing up a child, but I know _you_ would only spoil him. So you just leave me to manage him.”

 

“There, there, Mycroft, you can have your own way,” said Greg reassuringly. “Only be as good and kind to him as you can without spoiling him. I believe he’s one of the sort you can do anything with, if you only get him to love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think of Sherlock's solution to the problem of his gender? And what might be the deepest wishes of his little heart and soul? Find out next week, when Sherlock Says His Prayers.


	5. Sherlock Says His Prayers

Mycroft and Greg decided not to tell Sherlock of their decision in his favour until the following day. They wanted to give him ample time to reflect on the enormity of the change he had proposed to undertake. Living his life as a girl would be a difficult challenge, and not one to be embarked upon without due consideration. 

 

When Mycroft took Sherlock up to bed that night he said stiffly:

 

“Now, Sherlock, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I can’t allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing, fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven’t any use at all for children who aren’t neat.”

 

“I was so harrowed up in my mind last night that I didn’t think about my clothes at all,” said Sherlock. “I’ll fold them nicely tonight. They always made us do that at the orphan asylum. Half the time, though, I’d forget, I’d be in such a hurry to get into bed nice and quiet and visit my Mind Palace.”

 

“You’ll have to remember a little better if you stay here,” admonished Mycroft. “There, that looks better. Say your prayers now and get into bed.”

 

“I never say any prayers,” announced Sherlock.

 

Mycroft looked at him in horrified astonishment.

 

“Why, Sherlock, what do you mean? Were you never taught to say your prayers?”

 

“Oh, yes, at the asylum Sunday School. They made us learn the whole catechism. I liked it pretty well. There’s something splendid about some of the words. ‘Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.’ Isn’t that grand? It has such a roll to it — just like a big organ playing. You couldn’t quite call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn’t it?”

 

“We’re not talking about poetry, Sherlock — we are talking about saying your prayers. People will think you’re terribly wicked if you don’t say your prayers every night.”

 

“ _You’d_ find it easier to be wicked than good if _you_ had curly hair,” said Sherlock reproachfully. “People who haven’t curly hair don’t know what trouble is. Miss Anthea told me that God made my hair curly _on purpose_ , and I’ve never cared about Him since.”

 

Mycroft decided that Sherlock’s religious training must be begun at once. Plainly there was no time to be lost.

 

“You must say your prayers while you are under my roof, Sherlock.”

 

“Why, of course, if you want me to,” assented Sherlock cheerfully. “I’d do anything to oblige you. But you’ll have to tell me what to say for this once. After I get into bed I’ll imagine out a nice prayer to say always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now that I come to think of it.”

 

“You must kneel down,” said Mycroft in embarrassment.

 

Sherlock knelt at Mycroft’s knee and looked up gravely.

 

“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone, or into the deep, deep woods, and I’d look up into the sky — up — up — up — into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just _feel_ a prayer… Well, I’m ready. What am I to say?”

 

Mycroft felt more embarrassed than ever. “You’re old enough to pray for yourself, Sherlock,” he said. “Just thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you want.”

 

“Well, I’ll do my best,” promised Sherlock, bowing his head. “Gracious heavenly Father — that’s the way the ministers say it in church, so I suppose it’s all right in private prayer, isn’t it?” he interjected, lifting his head for a moment.

 

Mycroft nodded for him to go on.

 

“Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters. I’m really extremely grateful for them. And that’s all the blessings I can think of just now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want, they’re so numerous that it would take a great deal of time to name them all, so I will only mention the two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let me be good-looking when I grow up.

I remain,

Yours respectfully,

Sherlock Scott

 

“There, did I do all right?” he asked eagerly, getting up. “I could have made it much more flowery if I’d had a little more time to think it over.”

 

Poor Mycroft was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Sherlock that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. He tucked the child up in bed, and was leaving the room with the light when Sherlock called him back.

 

“I’ve just thought of it now. I should have said, ‘Amen’ in place of ‘yours respectfully,’ shouldn’t I? — the way the ministers do. I’d forgotten it, but I felt a prayer should be finished off in some way, so I put in the other. Do you suppose it will make any difference?”

 

“I — I don’t suppose it will,” said Mycroft. “Go to sleep now like a good child. Good night.”

 

“I can say good night tonight with a clear conscience,” said Sherlock, cuddling luxuriously down among his pillows.

 

Mycroft retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table, and glared at Greg.

 

“Greg Lestrade, it’s about time somebody adopted that child and taught him something. He’s next door to a perfect heathen. Will you believe that he never said a prayer in his life till tonight? He’ll have to go to Sunday School just as soon as I can get some suitable clothes made for him.”

 

“Girl’s clothes,” Greg reminded him. “And we’ll have to get used to calling him _her_.” 

 

“I foresee that we shall have our hands full.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How will Mycroft and Greg handle raising Sherlock? Find out next week, when Sherlock's Bringing-Up is Begun.


	6. Sherlock's Bringing-Up is Begun

For reasons best known to himself, Mycroft did not tell Sherlock that he was to stay at Green Gables until the next afternoon. During the morning he kept the child busy with various tasks and watched over him with a keen eye while he did them. By noon he had concluded that Sherlock was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick to learn; his most serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into daydreams in the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as he was sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe.

 

When Sherlock had finished washing the dinner dishes, he suddenly confronted Mycroft with the air and expression of one desperately determined to learn the worst. His thin little body trembled from head to foot; his face flushed and his eyes dilated until they were almost black; he clasped his hands tightly and said in an imploring voice:

 

“Oh, please, Mr. Holmes, won’t you tell me if you are going to send me away or not? I’ve tried to be patient all the morning, but I really feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It’s a dreadful feeling. Please tell me.”

 

“You haven’t scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you to do,” said Mycroft immovably. “Just go and do it before you ask any more questions, Sherlock.”

 

Sherlock went and attended to the dishcloth. Then he returned to Mycroft and fastened imploring eyes on the latter’s face. 

 

“Well,” said Mycroft, unable to find any excuse for deferring his explanation any longer, “I suppose I might as well tell you. Greg and I have decided to keep you — that is, if you are certain you’re willing to live as a girl. Why, child, whatever is the matter?”

 

“I’m crying,” said Sherlock in a tone of bewilderment. “I can’t think why. I’m as glad as glad can be. Oh, _glad_ doesn’t seem the right word at all. I’m so happy. I’ll try to be so good. It will be uphill work, I expect, for Miss Anthea often told me I was desperately wicked. However, I’ll do my very best. But can you tell me why I’m crying?”

 

“I suppose it’s because you’re all excited and worked up,” said Mycroft disapprovingly. “Sit down on that chair and try to calm yourself. I’m afraid you both cry and laugh far too easily. Yes, you can stay here and we will try to do right by you. You must go to school; but it’s only a fortnight till vacation, so it isn’t worth while for you to start before it opens again in September.”

 

“What am I to call you?” asked Sherlock. “Shall I always say Mr. Holmes? Can I call you Uncle Mycroft?”

 

“No; you’ll call me just plain Mycroft.”

 

“It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Mycroft,” protested Sherlock.

 

“I guess there’ll be nothing disrespectful in it if you’re careful to speak respectfully.”

 

“I’d love to call you Uncle Mycroft,” said Sherlock wistfully. “I’ve never had an uncle — or any relation at all. It would make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can’t I call you Uncle Mycroft?”

 

“No. I’m not your uncle and I don’t believe in calling people names that don’t belong to them.”

 

“But we could imagine you were my uncle.”

 

_“I_ couldn’t,” said Mycroft grimly.

 

“Don’t you ever imagine things different from what they really are?” asked Sherlock, wide-eyed.

 

“No.”

 

“Oh!” Sherlock drew a long breath. “Oh, Mr.— Mycroft, how much you miss!”

 

“I don’t believe in imagining things different from what they really are,” retorted Mycroft. 

 

“But now that I’m going to stay, you’ll have to imagine that I’m a girl.”

 

“Yes, I suppose I shall. And that reminds me — we’ll have to get a couple of dresses for you at once. Go into the sewing room, Sherlock — be sure your feet are clean and don’t let any flies in — and bring me out the tape measure.”

 

“Oh, I’ve never been measured,” said Sherlock excitedly. “At the orphan asylum, they just stuffed me into whatever clothes were available, until I simply couldn’t fit anymore, and then they’d find something so much bigger that it hung off me like a sack until I grew. It will be wonderful to wear something that fits properly, even if it is a dress. People in properly-fitting clothes always look so much more comfortable. Have you ever noticed that?”

 

“Here is something for you to notice, Sherlock. When I tell you to do a thing I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and discourse about it. Just go and do as I bid you.”

 

Sherlock promptly departed for the sewing-room across the hall; he failed to return. After waiting ten minutes, Mycroft marched after him with a grim expression. He found Sherlock standing motionless before a picture hanging on the wall between the two windows, with his eyes a-star with dreams. 

 

“Sherlock, whatever are you thinking of?” demanded Mycroft sharply.

 

Sherlock came back to earth with a start.

 

“That,” he said, pointing to the picture — a rather vivid chromolithograph entitled _Christ Blessing Little Children,_ “and I was just imagining I was one of them — that I was the little girl in the blue dress, standing off by herself in the corner as if she didn’t belong to anybody, like me. She looks lonely and sad, don’t you think? I guess she hadn’t any father or mother of her own. But she wanted to be blessed, too, so she just crept shyly up on the outside of the crowd, hoping nobody would notice her — except Him. I’m sure I know just how she felt. Her heart must have beat and her hands must have got cold, like mine did when I asked you if I could stay.”

 

“Sherlock,” said Mycroft, “it doesn’t sound right to talk so familiarly about such things. And another thing, Sherlock, when I send you after something you’re to bring it at once and not fall into dreaming and imagining before pictures. Remember that. Now, let’s get your measurements.”

 

Sherlock did his best to hold still as Mycroft measured him.

 

“Mycroft,” he demanded presently, “do you think that I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonlea?”

 

“A — a what kind of friend?”

 

“A bosom friend — an intimate friend, you know — a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I’ve dreamed of meeting one all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it’s possible?”

 

“Molly Hooper lives over at Orchard Slope and she’s about your age. She’s a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when she comes home. She’s visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You’ll have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Hooper is a very particular woman. She won’t let Molly play with anyone who isn’t nice and good.”

 

Sherlock, eyes aglow with interest, asked, “What is Molly like? Her hair isn’t curly, is it? Oh, I hope not. It’s bad enough to have curly hair myself, but I would feel so sad for her, if she was similarly afflicted.”

 

“Molly is a very pretty little girl. She has straight hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty.”

 

Mycroft was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.

 

But Sherlock waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful possibilities before it.

 

“Oh, I’m so glad she’s pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself — and that’s impossible in my case — it would be best to have a beautiful bosom friend. 

 

“At the orphan asylum there was a bookcase with glass doors. There weren’t any books in it; and one of the doors was broken. But the other was whole, and I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little boy who lived in it. I called him Victor Trevor, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to him by the hour, and tell him everything. 

 

“Victor was the comfort and consolation of my life. I used to imagine that the bookcase was enchanted, and that if I only knew the spell I could open the door and step right into the room where Victor Trevor lived. And then Victor would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have lived there happily for ever after. The night before I left the asylum I said good-bye to Victor, and oh, his good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones.”

 

“I don’t approve of such goings-on,” said Mycroft. “You seem to half believe your own imaginings. It will be good for you to have a real live friend to put such nonsense out of your head. But don’t let Mrs. Hooper hear you talking about your Victor Trevor, or she’ll think you tell stories.”

 

“Oh, I won’t. I couldn’t talk of him to everybody — his memory is too sacred for that. But I thought I’d like to have you know about him.”

 

“There — I’m finished taking your measurements,” Mycroft said gruffly, feeling strangely honoured by the child’s confidence.

 

…

 

That night, tucked up in bed, Mycroft discussed the subject with Greg, with whom Sherlock had also shared the story of Victor Trevor.

 

“There’s something distinctly odd about that child,” Mycroft said. “I’m not sure he can distinguish fantasy from reality.”

 

“He’s led such a lonely, unloved life,” Greg replied. “It makes sense that he would conjure up a friend to talk to.”

 

“I suppose so. But now that he’s here with us, I hope he won’t spend so much time living in his imagination.”

 

“I think his imagination is going to come in very handy,” said Greg. “After all, if he’s going to have to pretend to be a girl around everyone but us, it will be important for him to be able to imagine what a girl would say or do.”

 

“Well, he claimed to be a good actor. I hope he can pull this off.”

 

“Of course he can. Other than Sherlock, there’s not a single person on the whole of Prince Edward Island with enough imagination to picture a boy wearing a dress. No one will look past the surface.”

 

“They do say ‘clothes make the man,’” Mycroft allowed. 

 

Greg chuckled. “Or, in this case, clothes shall make the girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you think Sherlock's life at Green Gables will change, now that he knows he can stay - so long as he pretends to be a girl? Find out next week, when Sally Donovan is Properly Horrified.
> 
> My entry in last year's Sherlock Sunday Summer Serial, [Southanger Abbey](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10885071), is now a complete 7-hour [podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15058439), read for you by the incredibly talented Lockedinjohnlock. Please check it out, and leave her some kudos and comments. :)


	7. Sally Donovan is Properly Horrified

Sherlock had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Donovan arrived to inspect “the orphan girl.” Sally, to do her justice, was not to blame for this. A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables. Sally was not often sick, and had a well-defined contempt for people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to see Greg and Mycroft’s orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.

 

Sherlock had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Mycroft and Greg had lost no time in outfitting him as a girl, so that he might have the run of the property without worrying about being spotted. Already he was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. He had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and he had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.

 

Sherlock had made friends with the spring down in the hollow — a wonderful, deep, clear icy-cold spring. It was set about with smooth red sandstones and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log bridge over the brook. That bridge led Sherlock’s dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces. 

 

All these voyages of exploration were made in the odd half-hours which he was allowed for play, and Sherlock talked Greg and Mycroft half-deaf over his discoveries. Not that Greg complained, to be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his face. Mycroft permitted the “chatter” until he found himself becoming too interested in it, whereupon he always promptly quenched Sherlock by a curt command to hold his tongue.

 

Sherlock was out in the orchard when Sally came, and Greg was working in the back field; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk her illness fully over in a tete-a-tete with Mycroft, describing every ache and pulse beat with such evident enjoyment that Mycroft thought even grippe must bring its compensations. When details were exhausted, Sally introduced the real reason of her call.

 

“It’s a great responsibility you and Greg have taken on yourselves,” said that lady gloomily, “especially when you’ve never had any experience with children. You don’t know much about this orphan girl or her real disposition, I suppose, and there’s no guessing how a child like that will turn out. But I don’t want to discourage you I’m sure, Mycroft.”

 

“I’m not feeling discouraged,” was Mycroft’s dry response. “When I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you’d like to see Sherlock. I’ll call her in.”

 

Sherlock came running in presently, his face sparkling with the delight of his orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding himself in the unexpected presence of a stranger, he halted confusedly inside the door. He certainly was an odd-looking little creature in the new dress Greg had bought him, below which his thin legs seemed ungracefully long. The wind had ruffled his hatless hair into extravagant disorder and it had never looked wilder than at that moment.

 

“Well, they didn’t pick you for your looks, that’s sure and certain,” was Sally Donovan’s emphatic comment. 

 

Sally was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favour. 

 

“She’s terribly skinny and homely, Mycroft. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did anyone ever see such such wild, unruly curly hair! Come here, child, I say.”

 

Sherlock “came there,” but not exactly as Sally expected. With one bound he crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Sally, his face scarlet with anger, his lips quivering, and his whole slender form trembling from head to foot.

 

“I hate you,” he cried in a choked voice, stamping his foot on the floor. “I hate you — I hate you — I hate you — ” a louder stamp with each assertion of hatred. “How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare you mention my curly hair? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling woman!”

 

“Sherlock!” exclaimed Mycroft in consternation.

 

But Sherlock continued to face Sally undauntedly, head up, eyes blazing, hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from him like an atmosphere.

 

“How dare you say such things about me?” he repeated vehemently. “How would you like to have such things said about you? How would you like to be told that I can deduce you are bossy and arrogant and even your husband is afraid you? I don’t care if I do hurt your feelings by saying so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever hurt before. And I’ll _never_ forgive you for it, never, never!”

 

_Stamp! Stamp!_

 

“Did anybody ever see such a temper!” exclaimed the horrified Sally.

 

“Sherlock, go to your room and stay there until I come up,” said Mycroft, recovering his powers of speech with difficulty.

 

Sherlock, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the tins on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the hall and up the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that the door of the east gable had been shut with equal vehemence.

 

“Well, I don’t envy you your job bringing _that one_ up, Mycroft,” said Sally with unspeakable solemnity.

 

Mycroft opened his lips to say he knew not what of apology or deprecation. What he did say was a surprise to himself then and ever afterwards.

 

“You shouldn’t have criticized the child about her looks, Sally.”

 

“Mycroft Holmes, you don’t mean to say that you are upholding her in such a terrible display of temper as we’ve just seen?” demanded Sally indignantly.

 

“No,” said Mycroft slowly, “I’m not trying to excuse her. She’s been very naughty and I’ll have to give her a talking to about it. But we must make allowances for her. She’s never been taught what is right. And you _were_ too hard on her, Sally.”

 

Mycroft could not help tacking on that last sentence, although he was again surprised at himself for doing it. Sally got up with an air of offended dignity.

 

“Well, I see that I’ll have to be very careful what I say after this, Mycroft, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness knows where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I’m not vexed — don’t worry yourself. I’m too sorry for you to leave any room for anger in my mind. You’ll have your own troubles with that child. 

 

“But if you’ll take my advice — which I suppose you won’t do, although I’ve raised my own children and sent them successfully off into the world — you’ll do that ‘talking to’ you mention with a fair-sized birch switch. I should think _that_ would be the most effective language for that kind of a child. 

 

“Well, good evening, Mycroft. I hope you’ll come down to see me as often as usual. But you can’t expect me to visit here again in a hurry, if I’m liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It’s something new in _my_ experience.”

 

Whereat Sally swept out and away,  and Mycroft, with a very solemn face, betook himself to the east gable.

 

On the way upstairs he pondered uneasily as to what he ought to do. He felt no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted. How unfortunate that Sherlock should have displayed such temper before Sally Donovan, of all people! Then Mycroft suddenly became aware of an uncomfortable and rebuking consciousness that he felt more humiliation over this than sorrow over the discovery of such a serious defect in Sherlock’s disposition. 

 

And how was Mycroft to punish him? The amiable suggestion of the birch switch — to the efficiency of which all of Sally’s own children could have borne smarting testimony — did not appeal to Mycroft. He did not believe he could whip a child. No, some other method of punishment must be found to bring Sherlock to a proper realisation of the enormity of his offence.

 

Mycroft found Sherlock face downward on his bed, crying bitterly, quite oblivious of muddy boots on a clean counterpane.

 

“Sherlock,” he said, not ungently.

 

No answer.

 

“Sherlock,” with greater severity, “get off that bed this minute and listen to what I have to say to you.”

 

Sherlock squirmed off the bed and sat rigidly on a chair beside it, his face swollen and tear-stained and his eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.

 

“This is a nice way for you to behave. Sherlock! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

 

“She hadn’t any right to call me ugly and curly-haired, when her hair is curlier than mine,” retorted Sherlock, evasive and defiant.

 

“You hadn’t any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you did to her, Sherlock. I was ashamed of you — thoroughly ashamed of you. I wanted you to behave nicely to Mrs. Donovan, and instead of that you have disgraced me. I’m sure I don’t know why you should lose your temper like that just because Mrs. Donovan said you were curly-haired and homely. You say it yourself often enough.”

 

“Oh, but there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,” wailed Sherlock. “You may know a thing is so, but you can’t help hoping other people don’t quite think it is. I suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn’t help it. When she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me. I _had_ to fly out at her.”

 

“Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself, I must say. Mrs. Donovan will have a nice story to tell about you everywhere — and she’ll tell it, too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that, Sherlock.”

 

“Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that you were skinny and ugly,” pleaded Sherlock tearfully.

 

An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Mycroft. He had been a very small child when he had heard one aunt say of him to another, “What a pity he is such a queer, homely little thing.”

 

Mycroft was every day of forty before the sting had gone out of that memory.

 

“I don’t say that I think Mrs. Donovan was exactly right in saying what she did to you, Sherlock,” he admitted in a softer tone. “Sally is too outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behaviour on your part. She was a stranger and an adult and my visitor — all three very good reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You were rude and saucy and” — Mycroft had a saving inspiration of punishment — “you must go to her and tell her you are very sorry for your bad temper and ask her to forgive you.”

 

“I can never do that,” said Sherlock determinedly and darkly. “You can punish me in any way you like, Mycroft. You can shut me up in a dark, damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and water and I shall not complain. But I cannot ask Mrs. Donovan to forgive me.”

 

“Greg and I are not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp dungeons,” said Mycroft drily, “especially as they’re rather scarce in Avonlea. But apologise to Mrs. Donovan you must and shall, and you’ll stay here in your room until you can tell me you’re willing to do it.”

 

“I shall have to stay here forever then,” said Sherlock mournfully, “because I can’t tell Mrs. Donovan I’m sorry I said those things to her. How can I? I’m _not_ sorry. I’m sorry I’ve vexed you; but I’m _glad_ I told her just what I did. My deductions were correct, and it was a great satisfaction to speak them. I can’t say I’m sorry when I’m not, can I? I can’t even _imagine_ I’m sorry.”

 

“Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the morning,” said Mycroft, rising to depart. “You’ll have the night to think over your conduct and come to a better frame of mind. You said you would try to be very good if we kept you at Green Gables, but I must say it hasn’t seemed very much like it this evening.”

 

Leaving these parting words to rankle in Sherlock’s stormy bosom, Mycroft descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul. He was as angry with himself as with Sherlock, because whenever he recalled Sally’s dumbfounded countenance his lips twitched with amusement and he felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Sherlock live out the rest of his life confined to the east gable? Or will he eventually decide to apologize to Sally Donovan? Find out next week...


	8. Sherlock's Apology

Embarrassed by his own failure to instill proper manners in Sherlock, after having insisted that the child’s bringing-up should be left to him, and afraid that Greg would find even greater inappropriate amusement in the affair than he had done himself, Mycroft said nothing about the incident with Sally Donovan that evening; but when Sherlock proved still refractory the next morning, an explanation had to be made to account for his absence from the breakfast table. Mycroft told Greg the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of the enormity of Sherlock’s behaviour.

 

“It’s a good thing Sally Donovan got a calling down; she’s a meddlesome old gossip,” was Greg’s consolatory rejoinder.

 

“Greg Lestrade, I’m astonished at you. You know that Sherlock’s behaviour was dreadful, and yet you take his part! I suppose you’ll be saying next thing that he oughtn’t to be punished at all!”

 

“Well, no — not exactly,” said Greg uneasily. “I know he ought to be punished a little. But don’t be too hard on him, Mycroft. Remember, he hasn’t ever had anyone to teach him right. You’re — you’re going to give him something to eat, aren’t you?”

 

“When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behaviour?” demanded Mycroft indignantly. 

 

“I seem to recall you refusing to allow me to put a certain something in _my_ mouth, the last time you were cross with me,” Greg teased.

 

“ _Hush!_ The boy might hear you! How can you talk so, when there’s a child in the house?”

 

“He’s all the way up in the east gable.”

 

“And that’s where he’ll stay, until he’s willing to apologise to Mrs. Donovan, and that’s final, Greg.”

 

Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals — for Sherlock still remained obdurate, and Greg was too distressed for conversation. After each meal Mycroft carried a well-filled tray to the east gable and brought it down later, not noticeably depleted. Greg eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Sherlock eaten anything at all?

 

In general, Greg deferred to Mycroft in the raising of Sherlock, as he had agreed to do, but this was a special circumstance. When Mycroft went out that evening to bring the cows from the back pasture, Greg, who had been hanging about the barns and watching, slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open the door to peep in.

 

Sherlock was sitting on the yellow chair by the window, gazing mournfully out into the garden. Very small and unhappy he looked, and Greg’s heart smote him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to him.

 

“Sherlock,” he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. “How are you doing, Sherlock?”

 

Sherlock smiled wanly.

 

“Pretty well. I’ve been imagining a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of course, it’s rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to that.”

 

Sherlock smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary imprisonment before him.

 

Greg decided that he must say what he had come to say without loss of time, lest Mycroft return prematurely. “Well now, Sherlock, don’t you think you’d better apologise and have it over with?” he whispered. “It’ll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Mycroft’s a dreadfully determined man — dreadfully determined, Sherlock. Do it right off, I say, and have it over.”

 

“I suppose I could do it to oblige you,” said Sherlock thoughtfully. “It would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I _am_ sorry now. I wasn’t a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I stayed mad all night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn’t in a temper anymore — and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed of myself. 

 

“But I just couldn’t think of going and telling Mrs. Donovan so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I’d stay shut up here forever rather than do that. But still — I’d do anything for you, Greg — if you really want me to…”

 

“Of course I do. It’s terribly lonesome downstairs without you. Just go and smooth things over.”

 

“Very well,” said Sherlock resignedly. “As soon as Mycroft comes in, I’ll tell him I’ve repented.”

 

“That’s right, Sherlock. But don’t tell Mycroft I said anything about it. He might think I was trying to take over the raising of you, and I promised not to do that.”

 

“Wild horses won’t drag the secret from me,” promised Sherlock solemnly. “How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?”

 

But Greg was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Mycroft should suspect what he had been up to. 

 

Mycroft himself, upon his return to the house, was agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, “Mycroft,” over the banisters.

 

“Well?” he said, going into the hall.

 

“I’m sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I’m willing to go and tell Mrs. Donovan so.”

 

“Very well.” Mycroft’s crispness gave no sign of his relief. He had been wondering what he should do if Sherlock did not give in. “I’ll take you down after milking.”

 

Accordingly, after milking, behold Mycroft and Sherlock walking down the lane, the former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected. But halfway there Sherlock’s dejection vanished as if by enchantment. He lifted his head and stepped lightly along, his eyes fixed on the sunset sky and an air of subdued exhilaration about him. 

 

Mycroft beheld the change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved him to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Donovan.

 

“What are you thinking of, Sherlock?” he asked sharply.

 

“I’m imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Donovan,” answered Sherlock dreamily.

 

This was satisfactory — or should have been so. But Mycroft could not rid himself of the notion that something in his scheme of punishment was going askew. Sherlock had no business to look so rapt and radiant.

 

Rapt and radiant Sherlock continued until they were in the very presence of Mrs. Donovan, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was spoken Sherlock suddenly went down on his knees before the astonished Sally and held out his hands beseechingly.

 

“Oh, Mrs. Donovan, I am so extremely sorry,” he said with a quiver in his voice. “I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to you — and I’ve disgraced the dear friends, Greg and Mycroft, who have let me stay at Green Gables although I’m just a poor orphan. I’m a dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out by respectable people forever. 

 

“It was very wicked of me to fly into a temper because you told me the truth. It _was_ the truth; every word you said was true. My hair is wildly curly and I’m skinny and ugly. What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn’t have said it. Oh, Mrs. Donovan, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong sorrow. Would you wish that on a poor little orphan girl, even if she had a dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn’t. Please say you forgive me, Mrs. Donovan.”

 

Sherlock clasped his hands together, bowed his head, and waited for the word of judgment.

 

There was no mistaking his sincerity — it breathed in every tone of his voice. Both Mycroft and Mrs. Donovan recognised its unmistakable ring. But the former understood in dismay that Sherlock was actually enjoying his valley of humiliation — was revelling in the thoroughness of his abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which he, Mycroft, had congratulated himself? Sherlock had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.

 

Good Mrs. Donovan, not being overburdened with perception, did not see this. She only perceived that Sherlock had made a very thorough apology and all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.

 

“There, there, get up, child,” she said heartily. “Of course I forgive you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I’m such an outspoken person. You just mustn’t mind me, that’s what. It can’t be denied your hair is terribly unruly; but I know just how to tame curly hair, and I can show you a few tricks. And I knew a girl once — went to school with her, in fact — whose hair was every mite as wild as yours when she was young, but when she grew up it became quite manageable and beautiful. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised if yours did, too — not a mite.”

 

“Oh, Mrs. Donovan!” Sherlock drew a long breath as he rose to his feet. “You have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh, I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be manageable when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one’s hair was beautiful, don’t you think? And now, may I go out into your garden and sit on that bench under the apple trees while you and Mycroft are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there.”

 

“Yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of those white June lilies over in the corner if you like.”

 

As the door closed behind Sherlock, Sally Donovan got briskly up to light a lamp.

 

“She’s an odd little thing, Mycroft. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind of captivating about her after all. I don’t feel so surprised at you and Greg taking her in as I did — nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn out all right. 

 

“Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself — a little too forcible, you know; but she’ll likely get over that now that she’s come to live among civilised folks. And then, her temper’s pretty quick, I guess; but there’s one comfort — a child that has a quick temper just blazes up and cools down, and isn’t likely to be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that’s what. On the whole, Mycroft, I kind of like her.”

 

When Mycroft left, Sherlock came out of the fragrant twilight of the orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in his hands.

 

“I apologised pretty well, didn’t I?” he said proudly as they went down the lane. “I thought since I had to do it I might as well do it thoroughly.”

 

“You did it thoroughly, all right enough,” was Mycroft’s comment.

 

Mycroft was dismayed at finding himself inclined to laugh over the recollection. He had also an uneasy feeling that he ought to scold Sherlock for apologising so well; but then, that was ridiculous! He compromised with his conscience by saying severely:

 

“I hope you won’t have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope you’ll try to control your temper now, Sherlock.”

 

“That wouldn’t be so hard if people wouldn’t tease me about my looks,” said Sherlock with a sigh. “I don’t get cross about other things; but I’m _so_ tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right over. Do you suppose my hair really will be beautiful when I grow up?”

 

“You shouldn’t think so much about your looks, Sherlock. I’m afraid you are very vain.”

 

“How can I be vain when I know I’m homely?” protested Sherlock. “I love pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something that isn’t beautiful.”

 

“Handsome is as handsome does,” quoted Mycroft. 

 

“I’ve had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it,” remarked skeptical Sherlock, sniffing at his narcissi. “Oh, aren’t these flowers sweet! It was kind of Mrs. Donovan to say I could have some. I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Donovan now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologise and be forgiven, doesn’t it? Aren’t the stars bright tonight? If you could live in a star, which one would you pick? I’d like that lovely clear big one away over there above that dark hill.”

 

“Sherlock, do hold your tongue,” said Mycroft, thoroughly worn out trying to follow the gyrations of Sherlock’s thoughts.

 

Sherlock said no more until they turned into their own lane. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Sherlock suddenly came close to Mycroft and slipped his hand into the man’s hard palm.

 

“It’s lovely to be going home and know it’s home,” he said. “I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Mycroft, I’m so happy.”

 

Something warm and pleasant welled up in Mycroft’s heart at touch of that thin little hand in his own. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed him. He hastened to restore his sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral.

 

“You put me in mind of the words of the poet, Longfellow —

 

 _There was a little girl,_  
  _Who had a little curl,_  
 _Right in the middle of her forehead._  
 _When she was good,_  
 _She was very good indeed,_  
 _But when she was bad she was horrid._

 

“If you’ll be a good boy you’ll always be happy, Sherlock.”

 

“For you and Greg, I’ll try to be the best little boy — or the best little girl — in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will Sherlock's attempt to be the best little girl in the world really make him happy? Find out next week, when he makes A Solemn Vow and Promise.


	9. A Solemn Vow and Promise

“I’ve got some news for you, Sherlock,” said Greg one day. “Molly Hooper came home this afternoon. Would you like to come to Orchard Slope with me and get acquainted with Molly?”

 

Sherlock rose to his feet, with clasped hands. “Oh, Greg, I’m frightened — now that it has come I’m actually frightened. What if she shouldn’t like me! It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life.”

 

“Now, don’t get into a fluster,” said Greg. “I’m sure Molly will like you. It’s her mother you’ve got to reckon with. If she doesn’t like you it won’t matter how much Molly does.”

 

“True,” said Mycroft. “If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Donovan I don’t know what she’ll think of you. You must be polite and well behaved, and don’t make any of your startling speeches. For pity’s sake, if the child isn’t actually trembling!”

 

Sherlock _was_ trembling. His face was pale and tense.

 

“Oh,  you’d be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn’t like you,” he said as he hastened to get his hat.

 

They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the hill. Mrs. Hooper came to the kitchen door in answer to Greg’s knock. She was a tall woman, with a very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.

 

“How do you do, Greg?” she said cordially. “Come in. And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?”

 

“Yes, this is Sherlock Scott,” said Greg.

 

Mrs. Hooper shook hands and said kindly, “How are you?”

 

“I am well in body, although considerably rumpled up in spirit, thank you ma’am,” said Sherlock gravely. Then aside to Greg in an audible whisper, “There wasn’t anything startling in that, was there, Greg?”

 

Molly was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, and the merry expression on her face made her even prettier.

 

“This is my little girl Molly,” said Mrs. Hooper. “Molly, you might take Sherlock out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely too much — ” this to Greg as the children went out — “and I can’t prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She’s always poring over a book. I’m glad she has the prospect of a playmate — perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors.”

 

Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Sherlock and Molly, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies. The Hooper garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Sherlock’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. Now, though, he was too focused on his potential new friend.

 

“Oh, Molly,” said Sherlock at last, clasping his hands and speaking almost in a whisper, “oh, do you think you can like me a little — enough to be my bosom friend?”

 

Molly laughed. Molly always laughed before she spoke.

 

“Why, I guess so,” she said frankly. “I’m awfully glad you’ve come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with. There isn’t any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I’ve no sisters big enough.”

 

“Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?” demanded Sherlock eagerly.

 

Molly looked shocked.

 

“Why, it’s dreadfully wicked to swear,” she said rebukingly.

 

“Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.”

 

“I never heard of but one kind,” said Molly doubtfully.

 

“There really is another. Oh, it isn’t wicked at all. It just means vowing and promising solemnly.”

 

“Well, I don’t mind doing that,” agreed Molly, relieved. “How do you do it?”

 

“We must join hands — so,” said Sherlock gravely. “It ought to be over running water. We’ll just imagine this path is running water. I’ll repeat the oath first. _I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Molly Hooper, as long as the sun and moon shall endure._ Now you say it and put my name in.”

 

Molly repeated the “oath” with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:

 

“You’re an odd girl, Sherlock. I heard before that you were odd. But I believe I’m going to like you very much.”

 

When Greg and Sherlock went home, Molly went with them as far as the log bridge. The two children walked with their arms about each other. At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon together.

 

“Well, did you find Molly a kindred spirit?” asked Greg, as they went up through the garden of Green Gables.

 

“Oh yes,” sighed Sherlock. “Oh, Greg, I’m the happiest boy on Prince Edward Island this very moment. Thank you so much for taking me to Orchard Slope.”

 

On entering the house, Sherlock immediately began to tell Mycroft all about his new friend:

 

“Molly and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr. William Bell’s birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of china that are out in the woodshed? My birthday is in January and Molly’s is in February. Don’t you think that is a very strange coincidence? Molly is going to lend me a book to read. She says it’s perfectly splendid and tremendously exciting. She’s going to show me a place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Molly is going to teach me to sing a song called ‘Nelly in the Hazel Dell.’ She’s going to give me a picture to put up in my room; it’s a perfectly beautiful picture, she says — a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent gave it to her. 

 

“I wish I had something to give Molly. I’m an inch taller than Molly, but she is plumper; she says she’d like to be thin because it’s so much more graceful, but I’m afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings. We’re going to the shore some day to gather shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the Dryad’s Bubble. Isn’t that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I think.”

 

“Well, all I hope is you won’t talk Molly to death,” said Mycroft. “But remember this in all your planning, Sherlock: you’re not going to play all the time nor most of it. You’ll have your work to do and it’ll have to be done first.”

 

Sherlock’s cup of happiness was full — Mycroft couldn’t empty it, and Greg now caused it to overflow. He went to the pantry and brought out a small parcel. 

 

“I just remembered, I got you a little something when I was at the store in Carmody,” he said, handing the parcel to Sherlock. “I heard you say you liked chocolate caramels, so I got you some.”

 

“Humph,” sniffed Mycroft. “It’ll ruin his teeth and stomach.”

 

Greg gave him a sheepish look.

 

“There, there, child,” Mycroft said to Sherlock, “don’t look so dismal. You can eat those, since Greg has gone and bought them. He’d better have brought you peppermints. They’re more wholesome. Don’t sicken yourself eating all them at once now.”

 

“Oh, no, indeed, I won’t,” said Sherlock eagerly. “I’ll just eat one tonight. And I can give Molly half of them, can’t I? The other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It’s delightful to think I have something to give her.”

 

“I will say this for the child,” said Mycroft to Greg, when Sherlock had gone to his gable, “he isn’t stingy. Dear me, it’s only three weeks since he came, and it seems as if he’d been here always. I can’t imagine the place without him. Now, don’t be looking I told-you-so. I’m perfectly willing to own up that I’m glad I consented to keep the child, and that I’m getting fond of him, but don’t you rub it in, Greg Lestrade.”

 

“Perhaps there’s something else I could rub…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May you have a delightful week anticipating the next chapter, in which Sherlock experiences The Delights of Anticipation.


	10. The Delights of Anticipation

“It’s time Sherlock was in to do his sewing,” said Mycroft to himself, glancing at the clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon. “He stayed playing with Molly more than half an hour more than I gave him leave to; and now he’s perched out there on the woodpile talking to Greg, when he knows perfectly well he ought to be at his work. And of course Greg’s listening to him like a perfect ninny. The more that child talks and the odder the things he says, the more Greg’s delighted, evidently.”

 

Raising his voice, he called, “Sherlock Scott, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!”

 

A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Sherlock flying in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, curls wild from the wind.

 

“Oh, Mycroft,” he exclaimed breathlessly, “there’s going to be a Sunday School picnic next week — in Mr. Robert Hawkins’ field, right near the lake of Shining Waters. And there’s going to be ice cream — think of it, Mycroft — _ice cream!_ And, oh, Mycroft, can I go to it?”

 

“Just look at the clock, if you please, Sherlock. What time did I tell you to come in?”

 

“Two o’clock — but isn’t it splendid about the picnic, Mycroft? Please can I go? Oh, I’ve never been to a picnic — I’ve dreamed of picnics, but I’ve never — ”

 

“Yes, I told you to come at two o’clock. And it’s a quarter to three. I’d like to know why you didn’t obey me, Sherlock.”

 

“Why, I meant to, Mycroft, as much as could be. But you have no idea how fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Greg about the picnic. Greg is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I go?”

 

“You’ll have to learn to resist the fascination of Idle-whatever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time I mean that time and not half an hour later. And you needn’t stop to discourse with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the picnic, of course you can go. You’re a Sunday School scholar, and it’s not likely I’d refuse to let you go when all the other children are going.”

 

“But — but,” faltered Sherlock, “Molly says that everybody must take a basket of things to eat. I’m still hopeless at cooking, as you know, Mycroft, and I’d feel terribly humiliated if I had to go without a basket. It’s been preying on my mind ever since Molly told me.”

 

“Well, it needn’t prey any longer. I’ll bake you a basket.”

 

“Oh, Mycroft, you are so kind to me. Oh, I’m so much obliged to you.”

 

Mycroft was secretly vastly pleased at Sherlock’s impulsive appreciation, which was probably the reason why he said brusquely:

 

“Well, from now on I expect to see you doing strictly as you’re told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving you lessons in that some of these days. But you’re so impulsive, Sherlock, I’ve been waiting to see if you’d sober down a little and learn to be steady before I begin. You’ve got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done before teatime.”

 

“I do _not_ like patchwork,” said Sherlock dolefully, hunting out his workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white diamonds with a sigh. “I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but there’s no scope for imagination in patchwork. It’s just one little seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. If I didn’t have to pretend to be a girl, I wouldn’t have to sew patchwork.  

 

“But of course I’d rather be Sherlock of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Sherlock of any other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick sewing patches as it does when I’m playing with Molly, though. Oh, we do have such elegant times, Mycroft. I have to furnish most of the imagination, but I’m well able to do that. Molly is simply perfect in every other way. And that’s one good thing about pretending to be a girl — Mrs. Hooper is very strict, and would never let Molly play with me unsupervised if she knew I was a boy. 

 

“You know that little piece of land across the brook that runs up between our farm and Mr. Hooper’s? Right in the corner there is a little ring of white birch trees — the most romantic spot, Mycroft. Molly and I have our playhouse there. We call it Idlewild. Isn’t that a poetical name? I assure you it took me some time to think it out. I stayed awake nearly a whole night before I invented it. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it came like an inspiration. Molly was _enraptured_ when she heard it. 

 

“We have got our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and see it, Mycroft — won’t you? We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all our dishes on them. Of course, they’re all broken, but it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine that they are whole. There’s a piece of a plate with a spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful. We keep it in the parlour and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass is as lovely as a dream. Molly found it out in the woods behind their chicken house. It’s all full of rainbows — just little young rainbows that haven’t grown big yet — and Molly’s mother told her it was broken off a hanging lamp they once had. But it’s nice to imagine the fairies lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass. And Greg is going to make us a table. 

 

“Oh, we have named that little round pool over in Mr. Hooper’s field Willowmere. I got that name out of the book Molly lent me. That was a thrilling book, Mycroft. The heroine had five lovers. I’d be satisfied with one, wouldn’t you? She was very handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as easy as anything. I’d love to be able to faint, wouldn’t you, Mycroft? It’s so romantic. But I’m really very healthy for all I’m so thin. I believe I’m getting plumper, though. Don’t you think I am? I look at my elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming. 

 

“Molly is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to wear it to the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I don’t feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I’d live through it, but I’m certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn’t matter if I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn’t make up for missing this one. 

 

“They’re going to have boats on the Lake of Shining Waters — and ice cream, as I told you. I have never tasted ice cream. Molly tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination.”

 

“Sherlock, you have talked unceasingly on for ten minutes by the clock,” said Mycroft. “Now, just for curiosity’s sake, see if you can hold your tongue for the same length of time.”

 

Sherlock held his tongue as desired. But for the rest of the week he talked picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and he worked herself up into such a frantic state, lest it should keep on raining, that Mycroft made him sew an extra patchwork square by way of steadying his nerves.

 

On Sunday Sherlock confided to Mycroft and Greg on the way home from church that he grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced the picnic from the pulpit.

 

“Such a thrill as went up and down my back! I don’t think I’d ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be a picnic. I couldn’t help fearing I’d only imagined it. But when a minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.”

 

“You set your heart too much on things, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, with a sigh. “I’m afraid there’ll be a great many disappointments in store for you through life.”

 

“Oh, Mycroft, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,” exclaimed Sherlock. “You mayn’t get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Donovan says, ‘Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.’ But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the later-than-usual update. Usually, I do my final editing on Saturday evening, but yesterday I was inspired by the September Sherlock Challenge prompt - Sleep - to write [Are You Sleeping?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15868038). Then, I usually post first thing Sunday morning, but this morning I was delightfully distracted by chainedtothemirror's new illustration for [John Watson and the Curse of the Were-Kitten](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12293157), which obviously required me to post a second chapter of that story. So, with one thing and another, I completely forgot about this until a few minutes ago. Better late than never, though - right?


	11. Sherlock's Confession

On the Monday evening before the picnic, Mycroft came down from his room with a troubled face.

“Sherlock,” he said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing ‘Nelly of the Hazel Dell’ with a vigour and expression that did credit to Molly’s teaching, “did you see anything of my mother’s amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion after I polished it yesterday, but I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I — I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,” said Sherlock, a little slowly. “I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.”

“Did you touch it?” said Mycroft sternly.

“Y-e-e-s,” admitted Sherlock, “I took it up and I pinned it on my dress just to see how it would look.”

“You had no business to do anything of the sort. You shouldn’t have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn’t have touched a brooch that didn’t belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?”

“Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn’t it on a minute. Truly, I didn’t mean to intrude, Mycroft. I didn’t think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I’ll never do it again. That’s one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty thing twice.”

“You didn’t put it back,” said Mycroft. “That brooch isn’t anywhere on the bureau. You’ve taken it out or something, Sherlock.”

“I did put it back,” said Sherlock quickly — pertly, Mycroft thought. “I just don’t remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in the china tray. But I’m perfectly certain I put it back.”

“I’ll go and have another look,” said Mycroft, determining to be just. “If you put that brooch back it’s there still. If it isn’t I’ll know you didn’t, that’s all!”

Mycroft went to his room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau but in every other place he thought the brooch might possibly be. Then he went to Greg’s room — Greg’s room in name, that is, for the sake of propriety, though it was in reality the room they shared. The brooch was not to be found, and he returned to the kitchen.

“Sherlock, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once. Did you take it out and lose it?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Sherlock solemnly, meeting Mycroft’s angry gaze squarely. “I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the truth, if I was to be led to the block for it — although I’m not very certain what a block is. So there, Mycroft.”

Sherlock’s “so there” was only intended to emphasise his assertion, but Mycroft took it as a display of defiance.

“I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Sherlock,” he said sharply. “I know you are. There now, don’t say anything more unless you are prepared to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are ready to confess.”

“Will I take the peas with me?” said Sherlock meekly.

“No, I’ll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.”

When Sherlock had gone, Mycroft went about his evening tasks in a very disturbed state of mind. He was worried about his mother’s brooch. It was very valuable — and, more importantly, it was a cherished heirloom. What if Sherlock had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see he must have! With such an innocent face, too!

“I don’t know what I wouldn’t sooner have had happen,” thought Mycroft, as he anxiously shelled the peas. “Of course, I don’t suppose he meant to steal it or anything like that. He’s just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of his. He must have taken it, that’s clear, for there hasn’t been a soul in that room since he was in it, by his own admission, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there’s nothing surer. I suppose he has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear he’ll be punished.

“It’s a dreadful thing to think Sherlock tells falsehoods. It’s a far worse thing than his fit of temper. It’s a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can’t trust. Slyness and untruthfulness — that’s what he has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If he’d only have told the truth about it I wouldn’t mind so much.”

Mycroft went to his room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the east gable produced no result. Sherlock persisted in denying that he knew anything about the brooch, but Mycroft was only the more firmly convinced that he did.

He told Greg the story in bed that night. Greg was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Sherlock, but he had to admit that circumstances were against him.

“You’re sure it hasn’t fallen down behind the bureau?” was the only suggestion he could offer.

“I’ve moved the bureau and I’ve taken out the drawers and I’ve looked in every crack and cranny,” was Mycroft’s positive answer. “The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That’s the plain, ugly truth, Greg Lestrade, and we might as well look it in the face.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Greg asked, feeling secretly thankful that Mycroft and not he had to deal with the situation. He felt no desire to step in this time.

“He’ll stay in his room until he confesses,” said Mycroft grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. “Then we’ll see. Perhaps we’ll be able to find the brooch if he’ll only tell where he took it; but in any case he’ll have to be severely punished, Greg.”

“Well, _you’ll_ have to punish him,” said Greg. “I’ve nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.”

Mycroft felt deserted by everyone.

He went up to the east gable the next morning with a very serious face and left it with a face more serious still. Sherlock steadfastly refused to confess. He persisted in asserting that he had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been crying, and Mycroft felt a pang of pity which he sternly repressed.

“You’ll stay in this room until you confess, Sherlock. You can make up your mind to that,” he said firmly.

“But the picnic is tomorrow, Mycroft,” cried Sherlock. “You won’t keep me from going to that, will you? You’ll just let me out for the afternoon, won’t you? Then I’ll stay here as long as you like _afterwards_ cheerfully. But I _must_ go to the picnic.”

“You’ll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you’ve confessed, Sherlock.”

“Oh, Mycroft,” gasped Sherlock.

But Mycroft had gone out and shut the door.

Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables, and the birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Sherlock’s usual morning greeting from the east gable. But Sherlock was not at his window. When Mycroft took his breakfast up to him he found the child sitting primly on his bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.

“Mycroft, I’m ready to confess.”

“Ah!” Mycroft laid down his tray. Once again his method had succeeded; but his success was very bitter to him. “Let me hear what you have to say then, Sherlock.”

“I took the amethyst brooch,” said Sherlock, as if repeating a lesson he had learned. “I took it just as you said. I didn’t mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Mycroft, when I pinned it on my dress that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and pretend I was a noble lady. So I took the brooch.

“I thought I could put it back before you came home. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers and went down — down — down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that’s the best I can do at confessing, Mycroft.”

Mycroft felt hot anger surge up into his heart again. This child had taken and lost his mother’s treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance.

“Sherlock, this is terrible,” he said, trying to speak calmly. “You are the very wickedest child I ever heard of.”

“Yes, I suppose I am,” agreed Sherlock tranquilly. “And I know I’ll have to be punished. It’ll be your duty to punish me, Mycroft. Won’t you please get it over right off because I’d like to go to the picnic with nothing on my mind.”

“Picnic, indeed! You’ll go to no picnic today, Sherlock Scott. That shall be your punishment. And it isn’t half severe enough either for what you’ve done!”

“Not go to the picnic!” Sherlock sprang to his feet and clutched Mycroft’s hand. “But you _promised_ me I might! Oh, Mycroft, I _must_ go to the picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that. Oh, Mycroft, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice cream! I may never have a chance to taste ice cream again.”

Mycroft disengaged Sherlock’s clinging hands stonily.

“You needn’t plead, Sherlock. You are not going to the picnic and that’s final. No, not a word.”

Sherlock realised that Mycroft was not to be moved. He clasped his hands together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung himself face downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of disappointment and despair.

“For the land’s sake!” gasped Mycroft, hastening from the room. “I believe the child is crazy. No child in his senses would behave as he does. If he isn’t he’s utterly bad. Oh dear, I’m afraid Sally was right from the first. But I’ve taken him on, and I won’t look back.”

That was a dismal morning. Mycroft worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor and the dairy shelves when he could find nothing else to do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it — but Mycroft did. Then he went out and raked the yard.

At noon, when dinner was ready, he went to the stairs and called Sherlock. A tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.

“Come down to your dinner, Sherlock.”

“I don’t want any dinner, Mycroft,” said Sherlock, sobbingly. “I couldn’t eat anything. My heart is broken. You’ll feel remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Mycroft, but I forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don’t ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in affliction.”

Exasperated, Mycroft returned to the kitchen and poured out his tale of woe to Greg, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Sherlock, was a miserable man.

“Well now, he shouldn’t have taken the brooch, Mycroft, or told stories about it,” Greg admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic pork and greens as if he, like Sherlock, thought it a food unsuited to crises of feeling, “but he’s so young. Don’t you think it’s pretty rough not to let him go to the picnic when he’s so set on it?”

“Greg Lestrade, I’m amazed at you. I think I’ve let him off entirely too easy. And he doesn’t appear to realise how wicked he’s been at all — that’s what worries me most. If he’d really felt sorry it wouldn’t be so bad. And you don’t seem to realise it, either; you’re making excuses for him all the time to yourself — I can see that.”

“Well, he’s so young,” feebly reiterated Greg. “And there should be allowances made, Mycroft. You know he’s never had any proper bringing up.”

“Well, he’s having it now” retorted Mycroft.

The retort silenced Greg, if it did not convince him. That dinner was a very dismal meal.

When the dishes were washed and the bread sponge set and the hens fed, Mycroft remembered that he had noticed a small tear in his favourite cravat when he had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Aid Society. He would go and mend it.

The cravat was in a box in his trunk. As Mycroft lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the cravat — something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Mycroft snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the cravat by its catch!

“Dear life and heart,” said Mycroft blankly, “what does this mean? Here’s my mother’s brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of Hooper’s pond. Whatever did Sherlock mean by saying he took it and lost it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off my cravat Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!”

Mycroft betook himself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Sherlock had cried himself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.

“Sherlock Scott,” said Mycroft solemnly, “I’ve just found my mother’s brooch hanging to my cravat. Now I want to know what that rigmarole you told me this morning meant.”

“Why, you said you’d keep me here until I confessed,” returned Sherlock wearily, “and so I decided to confess, because I was determined to get to the picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed, and made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I wouldn’t forget it. But you wouldn’t let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble was wasted.”

Mycroft had to laugh in spite of himself. But his conscience pricked him.

“Sherlock, you do beat all! But I was wrong — I see that now. I shouldn’t have doubted your word when I’d never known you to tell a lie. Of course, it wasn’t right for you to confess to a thing you hadn’t done — it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you’ll forgive me, Sherlock, I’ll forgive you and we’ll start square again. And now get yourself ready for the picnic.”

Sherlock flew up like a rocket.

“Oh, Mycroft, isn’t it too late?”

“No, it’s only two o’clock. They won’t be more than well gathered yet, and it’ll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your hair and put on your gingham dress. I’ll fill a basket for you. There’s plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I’ll get Greg to hitch up the sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground.”

“Oh, Mycroft,” exclaimed Sherlock, flying to the washstand. “Five minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I’d never been born and now I wouldn’t change places with an angel!”

That evening, a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Sherlock returned to Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe. But of course he did try to describe it to Greg the entire way home in the buggy, and then immediately repeated it to Mycroft as soon as he saw him.

“Oh, Mycroft, I’ve had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a new word I learned today. Isn’t it very expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr. Robert Hawkins took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters — six of us at a time. And Janine Hawkins nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Hawkins hadn’t caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she’d have fallen in and probably been drowned. I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Mycroft, I assure you it was sublime.”

That evening, in bed, Mycroft told Greg candidly, “I’m willing to own up that I made a mistake, but I’ve learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Sherlock’s ‘confession,’ although I suppose I shouldn’t, for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn’t seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I’m responsible for it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe he’ll turn out all right yet. And there’s one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that he’s in.”


	12. An Unforgivable Insult

“What a splendid day!” said Sherlock, drawing a long breath. “Isn’t it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren’t born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. And it’s splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn’t it?”

 

“It’s a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty and hot,” said Molly practically, peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if the three juicy raspberry tarts reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl would have.

 

The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with one’s best chum would have forever and ever branded as “awful mean” the girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just got enough to tantalise you.

 

The way Sherlock and Molly went to school _was_ a pretty one. Sherlock thought those walks to and from school with Molly couldn’t be improved upon even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so unromantic; but to go by Lover’s Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.

 

Lover’s Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched far up into the woods to the end of the Holmes-Lestrade farm. It was the way by which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home in winter. Sherlock had named it Lover’s Lane before he had been a month at Green Gables.

 

“Not that lovers ever really walk there,” Sherlock explained to Greg, who forbore from correcting him, although he and Mycroft _did_ walk there together, often. “But Molly and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there’s a Lover’s Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it’s a very pretty name, don’t you think? So romantic! We can imagine the lovers into it, you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without people calling you crazy.”

 

Sherlock, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover’s Lane as far as the brook. Here Molly met him, and the two children went on up the lane under the leafy arch of maples until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane and walked through the Hooper’s back field and past Willowmere. Beyond Willowmere came Violet Vale — a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr. Andrew Bell’s big woods. 

 

“Of course, there are no violets there now,” Sherlock told Greg, “but Molly says there are millions of them in spring. Oh, Greg, can’t you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Molly says she never saw the beat of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It’s nice to be clever at something, isn’t it? But Molly named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so I let her; but I’m sure I could have found something more poetical than plain Birch Path. But the Birch Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Greg.”

 

It was. Other people besides Sherlock thought so when they stumbled on it. It was a little narrow twisting path, winding down over a long hill straight through Mr. Bell’s woods. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road if you were quiet — which, with Sherlock and Molly, happened about once in a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.

 

The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were carved all over their lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of school children. The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was a dusky fir wood, and a brook where all the children put their bottles of milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.

 

Mycroft and Greg had seen Sherlock start off to school on the first day of September with many secret misgivings. Sherlock was such an odd boy — and an even odder girl. How would he get on with the other children? And how on earth would he ever manage to hold his tongue during school hours?

 

Things went better than they feared, however. Sherlock came home that evening in high spirits.

 

“I think I’m going to like school here,” he announced to Greg and Mycroft. “I don’t think much of Mr. Anderson, though. He’s all the time making eyes at Prissy Adler. Prissy is grown up, you know. She’s sixteen, and she’s studying for the entrance examination into Queen’s Academy at Charlottetown next year. She sits in the long seat at the back and he sits there, too, most of the time — to explain her lessons, he says. But Prissy’s sister Irene says she saw him writing something on her slate, and when Prissy read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and Irene Adler says she doesn’t believe it had anything to do with the lesson.”

 

“Sherlock Scott, don’t let me hear you talking about your teacher in that way again,” said Mycroft sharply. “You don’t go to school to criticise the master. I guess he can teach _you_ something, and it’s your business to learn. And I want you to understand right off that you are not to come home telling tales about him. That is something I won’t encourage. I hope you were well-behaved.”

 

“Indeed I was,” said Sherlock comfortably. “It wasn’t so hard as you might imagine, either. I sit with Molly. Our seat is right by the window and we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of nice children in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime. It’s so nice to have a lot of children to play with. But of course I like Molly best and always will. I _adore_ Molly. 

 

“I’m dreadfully far behind the others my age. They’re all in the fifth book and I’m only in the fourth, because I didn’t get much schooling at the orphan asylum. Mr. Anderson said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Mycroft; he might have been politer to a stranger, I think. 

 

“Irene Adler gave me an apple. And Janine Hawkins told me that Mike Stamford told her that he heard Prissy Adler tell Sebastian Wilkes that I had very pretty eyes. That is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you can’t imagine what a strange feeling it gave me. Mycroft, do I really have pretty eyes? I know you’ll tell me the truth.”

 

“Your eyes look good enough, and they can see well enough, too, which is more to the point,” said Mycroft shortly. Secretly he thought Sherlock’s eyes were remarkable pretty; but he had no intention of telling him so.

 

That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this crisp September morning, Sherlock and Molly were tripping blithely down the Birch Path, two of the happiest children in Avonlea.

 

“I guess John Watson will be in school today,” said Molly. “He’s been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came home Saturday night. He’s _awfully_ handsome, Sherlock. And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.”

 

Molly’s voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than not.

 

“John Watson?” said Sherlock. “Isn’t it his name that’s written up on the porch wall with Mary Morstan’s and a big ‘Take Notice’ over them?”

 

“Yes,” said Molly, tossing her head, “but I’m sure he doesn’t like Mary Morstan so very much. I’ve heard him say he studied the multiplication table by her freckles.”

 

“Oh, don’t speak about freckles to me,” implored Sherlock. “It isn’t delicate when I’ve got so many now from playing outside all summer. But I do think that writing take-notices up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest ever. I should just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy’s. Not, of course,” he hastened to add, “that anybody would.”

 

Sherlock sighed. He didn’t want his name written up. But it was a little humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.

 

“Nonsense,” said Molly, whose dancing eyes and glossy tresses had played such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. “It’s only meant as a joke. And don’t you be too sure your name won’t ever be written up. Sebastian Wilkes is _dead gone_ on you. And Mike Stamford told his mother — his _mother_ , mind you — that you were the smartest girl in school. That’s better than being good-looking.”

 

“No, it isn’t,” said Sherlock. “I’ve been clever all my life, so I’m used to that. But it would be such a novelty to be good-looking. And I’m not interested in Sebastian Wilkes or Mike Stamford. If anyone wrote my name up with theirs I’d never get over it. Still, I suppose it _is_ nice to be head of your class.”

 

“You’ll have John in your class after this,” said Molly, “and he’s used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He’s only in the fourth book, same as you, although he’s nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for his health and John went with him. They were there three years and John didn’t go to school hardly any until they came back. You won’t find it so easy to be head after this, Sherlock.”

 

“I’m glad,” said Sherlock quickly. “I couldn’t really feel proud of keeping ahead of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got up yesterday spelling ‘ebullition.’ Jim Moriarty was ahead of me, and mind you, he peeped in his book. Mr. Anderson didn’t see him — he was looking at Prissy Adler — but I did. I just swept him a look of freezing scorn and he got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.”

 

“Jim Moriarty is a cheat all round,” said Molly indignantly, as they climbed the fence of the main road. “He actually went and put his milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. I won’t speak to him now.”

 

When Mr. Anderson was in the back of the room hearing Prissy Adler’s Latin, Molly whispered to Sherlock, “That’s John Watson sitting right across the aisle from you, Sherlock. Just look at him and see if you don’t think he’s handsome.”

 

Sherlock looked accordingly. He had a good chance to do so, for the said John Watson was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long braid of Janine Hawkins, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. Presently Janine started up to take a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek, believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at her and Mr. Anderson glared so sternly that Janine began to cry. John had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at Sherlock and winked with inexpressible drollery.

 

“I think John Watson _is_ handsome,” confided Sherlock to Molly, “but I think he’s very bold. It isn’t good manners to wink at a stranger.”

 

But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.

 

Mr. Anderson was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Prissy Adler, and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased: eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their slates, and driving crickets harnessed to strings up and down the aisle. 

 

John Watson was trying to make Sherlock Scott look at him and failing utterly, because Sherlock was at that moment totally oblivious not only to the very existence of John Watson, but of every other scholar in Avonlea school itself. With his chin propped on his hands and his eyes fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west window afforded, he was far away in a gorgeous dreamland, hearing and seeing nothing save his own wonderful visions.

 

John Watson wasn’t used to putting himself out to make a girl look at him and meeting with failure. She _should_ look at him, that curly-haired girl with the big eyes that weren’t like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.

 

John reached across the aisle, took hold of one of Sherlock’s curls, and said in a piercing whisper: “Poodle! Poodle! Poodle!”

 

Then Sherlock looked at him with a vengeance!

 

He did more than look. He sprang to his feet, his bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin. He flashed one indignant glance at John from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.

 

“You mean, hateful boy!” he exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”

 

And then — thwack! Sherlock had brought his slate down on John’s head and cracked it — slate, not head — clear across.

 

Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable one. Everybody said “Oh” in horrified delight. Molly gasped. Janine Hawkins, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry. Mike Stamford let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared open-mouthed at the tableau.

 

Mr. Anderson stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Sherlock’s shoulder.

 

“Sherlock Scott, what does this mean?” he said angrily. 

 

Sherlock returned no answer. It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect him to tell before the whole school that he had been called “poodle.” 

 

John it was who spoke up stoutly. “It was my fault Mr. Anderson. I teased her.”

 

Mr. Anderson paid no heed to John.

 

“I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a vindictive spirit,” he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of small imperfect mortals. “Sherlock, go and stand on the platform in front of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.”

 

Sherlock would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment, under which his sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash. With a white, set face he obeyed. Mr. Anderson took a chalk crayon and wrote on the blackboard above his head.

 

“Sherlock Scott has a very bad temper. Sherlock Scott must learn to control her temper,” and then read it out loud so that even the primer class, who couldn’t read writing, should understand it.

 

Sherlock stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above him. He did not cry or hang his head. Anger was still too hot in his heart for that, and it sustained him amid all his agony of humiliation. With resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks he confronted alike Molly’s sympathetic gaze and Mike Stamford’s indignant nods and Jim Moriarty’s malicious smiles. 

 

As for John Watson, Sherlock would not even look at him. He would _never_ look at him again! He would never speak to him!!

 

When school was dismissed, Sherlock marched out with his head held high. John Watson tried to intercept him at the porch door.

 

“I’m awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Sherlock,” he whispered contritely. “Honestly, I am. Don’t be mad for keeps, now.”

 

Sherlock swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. 

 

“Oh how could you, Sherlock?” breathed Molly, as they went down the road, half reproachfully, half admiringly. Molly felt that _she_ could never have resisted John’s plea.

 

“I shall never forgive John Watson,” said Sherlock firmly. “The iron has entered into my soul, Molly.”

 

Molly hadn’t the least idea what Sherlock meant, but she understood it was something terrible.

 

“You mustn’t mind John making fun of your hair,” she said soothingly. “Why, he makes fun of all the girls. And I never heard him apologise for anything before, either.”

 

“He dared to call me ‘poodle’,” said Sherlock with dignity. “John Watson has hurt my feelings _excruciatingly_ , Molly.”

 

It is possible the matter might have blown over without more excruciation if nothing else had happened. But when things begin to happen, they are apt to keep on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock have met at last - but their relationship isn't off to a very promising start. Will things get better? Or worse? Find out next week, when there's A Tempest in the School Teapot.
> 
> Meanwhile, you might enjoy two new additions to [The Ballads of John and Sherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/series/563162) that I posted this week - [Black London Cab](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15942473) and [Peak Camp Gay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15997466). Both are rated G.


	13. A Tempest in the School Teapot

Avonlea scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Bell’s spruce grove over the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they could keep an eye on Eben Wright’s house, where the master boarded. When they saw Mr. Anderson emerging therefrom they ran for the schoolhouse; but the distance being about three times longer than Mr. Wright’s lane, they were very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping, some three minutes too late.

 

On the day following Sherlock’s run-in with John Watson, Mr. Anderson was seized with one of his spasmodic fits of reform, and announced before going home to dinner that he should expect to find all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone who came in late would be punished.

 

All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Bell’s spruce grove as usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to “pick a chew.” But spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jim Moriarty shouting from the top of a patriarchal old spruce “Master’s coming.”

 

The girls, who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Sherlock, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to himself, with a wreath of rice lilies on his hair as if he were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all.

 

Sherlock could run like a deer, however; run he did with the impish result that he overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Anderson was in the act of hanging up his hat.

 

Mr. Anderson’s brief reforming energy was over; he didn’t want the bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Sherlock, who had dropped into his seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear, giving him a particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.

 

“Sherlock Scott, since you seem to be so fond of the boys’ company, we shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon,” he said sarcastically. “Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with John Watson.”

 

The other boys snickered. Molly, turning pale with pity, plucked the wreath from Sherlock’s hair and squeezed his hand. Sherlock stared at the master as if turned to stone.

 

“Did you hear what I said, Sherlock?” queried Mr. Anderson sternly.

 

“Yes, sir,” said Sherlock slowly “but I didn’t suppose you really meant it.”

 

“I assure you I did” — still with the sarcastic inflection which all the children, and Sherlock especially, hated. It flicked on the nerves. “Obey me at once.”

 

For a moment Sherlock looked as if he meant to disobey. Then, realising that there was no help for it, he rose haughtily, stepped across the aisle, sat down beside John Watson, and buried his face in his arms on the desk. Irene Adler, who got a glimpse of it as it went down, told the others going home from school that she’d “actually never seen anything like it — it was so white, with awful little red spots in it.”

 

To Sherlock, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be singled out for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it was worse still to be sent to a seat away from Molly; but that he should be forced to sit with John Watson was heaping insult on injury to a degree utterly unbearable. Sherlock felt that he could not bear it and it would be of no use to try. His whole being seethed with shame and anger and humiliation.

 

At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged. But as Sherlock never lifted his head and as John worked fractions as if his whole soul was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned to their own tasks and Sherlock was forgotten. When Mr. Anderson called the history class out, Sherlock should have gone, but he did not move, and Mr. Anderson, who had been writing some verses “To Priscilla” before he called the class, was thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never missed him. 

 

Once, when nobody was looking, John took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, “You are sweet,” and slipped it under the curve of Sherlock’s arm. Whereupon Sherlock arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of his fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath his heel, and resumed his position without deigning to bestow a glance on John.

 

When school was over for the day, Sherlock marched to his desk, ostentatiously took out everything therein — books and writing tablet, pen and ink, ruler and arithmetic — and piled them neatly on his cracked slate.

 

“What are you taking all those things home for, Sherlock?” Molly wanted to know, as soon as they were out on the road. She had not dared to ask the question before.

 

“I am not coming back to school any more,” said Sherlock. 

 

Molly gasped and stared at Sherlock to see if he meant it.

 

“Will Mycroft and Greg let you stay home?” she asked.

 

“They’ll have to,” said Sherlock. “I’ll _never_ go to school to that horrible teacher again.”

 

“Oh, Sherlock!” Molly looked as if she were ready to cry. “I do think you’re mean. What shall I do? Mr. Anderson will make me sit with Mary Morstan — I know he will because she is sitting alone — and I would much rather sit with you. Do come back, Sherlock.”

 

“I’d do almost anything in the world for you, Molly,” said Sherlock sadly. “I’d let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But I can’t do this, so please don’t ask it. You harrow up my very soul.”

 

“Just think of all the fun you will miss,” mourned Molly. “We are going to build the loveliest new house down by the brook; and we’ll be playing ball next week and you’ve never played ball, Sherlock. It’s tremendously exciting. And we’re going to learn a new song — Janine Hawkins is practicing it up now; and Irene Adler is going to bring a new Pansy book next week and we’re all going to read it out loud, down by the brook. And you know you are so fond of reading out loud, Sherlock.”

 

Nothing moved Sherlock in the least. His mind was made up. He would not go to school to Mr. Anderson again; he told Mycroft so when he got home.

 

“Nonsense,” said Mycroft.

 

“It isn’t nonsense at all,” said Sherlock, gazing at Mycroft with solemn, reproachful eyes. “Don’t you understand, Mycroft? I’ve been insulted.”

 

“Nevertheless, you’ll go to school tomorrow as usual.”

 

“Oh, no.” Sherlock shook his head gently. “I’m not going back, Mycroft. I’ll learn my lessons at home and I’ll be as good as I can be and hold my tongue all the time if it’s possible at all. But I will not go back to school, I assure you.”

 

Mycroft saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking out of Sherlock’s small face. He understood that he would have trouble in overcoming it; but he resolved wisely to say nothing more just then, and allowed Sherlock to escape up to the east gable. 

 

Greg, just then coming in from the field, and hearing Mycroft’s version of events, agreed that this was for the best. 

 

“Why don’t you run down and see Sally about it this evening,” he suggested. “There’s no use reasoning with Sherlock now. He’s too worked up, and you know he can be awfully stubborn if he takes the notion. As far as I can make out from what you’ve told me, Mr. Anderson has been carrying matters with a rather high hand. I think you should talk it over with Sally. She’s sent six children to school and she ought to know something about it. She’ll have heard the whole story, too, by this time.”

 

Mycroft found Mrs. Donovan knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully as usual.

 

“I suppose you know what I’ve come about,” Mycroft said, a little shamefacedly.

 

Sally nodded.

 

“About Sherlock’s fuss in school, I reckon,” she said. “Irene Adler was in on her way home from school and told me about it.”

 

“I don’t know what to do with her,” said Mycroft. “She declares she won’t go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up. I’ve been expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew things were going too smoothly to last. She’s so high strung. What would you advise, Sally?”

 

“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Mycroft,” said Mrs. Donovan amiably — Mrs. Donovan dearly loved to be asked for advice — “I’d just humour her a little at first, that’s what I’d do. It’s my belief that Mr. Anderson was in the wrong. Of course, it doesn’t do to say so to the children, you know. And of course he did right to punish her yesterday for giving way to temper. But today it was different. The others who were late should have been punished as well as Sherlock, that’s what. Irene Adler was quite indignant. She took Sherlock’s part right through and said all the scholars did too. Sherlock seems very popular among them, somehow. I never thought she’d get along with them so well.”

 

“Then you really think I’d better let her stay home,” said Mycroft in amazement.

 

“Yes. That is, I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it herself. Depend upon it, Mycroft, she’ll cool off in a week or so and be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what. While, if you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the better, in my opinion. 

 

“She won’t miss much by not going to school, as far as _that_ goes. Mr. Anderson isn’t any good at all as a teacher. The order he keeps is scandalous, that’s what, and he neglects the young fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he’s getting ready for Queen’s. He’d never have got the school for another year if his uncle hadn’t been a trustee — _the_ trustee, for he just leads the other two around by the nose, that’s what. I declare, I don’t know what education in this Island is coming to.”

 

Sally shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.

 

Mycroft took Sally’s advice, and not another word was said to Sherlock about going back to school. He learned his lessons at home, did his chores, and played with Molly in the chilly purple autumn twilights; but when he met John Watson on the road or encountered him in Sunday school, Sherlock passed him by with an icy contempt that was in no way thawed by John’s evident desire to appease him. Even Molly’s efforts as a peacemaker were of no avail. Sherlock had evidently made up his mind to hate John Watson to the end of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never written an Enemies to Friends to Lovers fic before, and it's a bit stressful. How could Sherlock possibly hate John??? This is a tragedy! And it's not the only one in store - next week, Molly is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results...
> 
> Meanwhile, I recently tried my hand at another genre I've never written before: tentacle porn. If they very idea doesn't scare you off, you might want to check out [The CRUEL of Baskerville](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16050560). But please do mind the tags and the archive warning. It is NOT my usual fluff.


	14. Molly is Invited to Tea with Disastrous Results

October was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.

 

Sherlock revelled in the world of colour about him.

 

“Oh, Mycroft,” he exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with his arms full of gorgeous boughs, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it? Look at these maple branches. Don’t they give you a thrill — several thrills? I’m going to decorate my room with them.”

 

“Messy things,” said Mycroft. “You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors stuff, Sherlock.”

 

“But bringing nature indoors is so romantic.”

 

“Nonsense. There’s no cause to be dragging the outside world into the house. Bedrooms were made to sleep in,” said Mycroft, determinedly forcing himself not to think about what else went on in the bedroom he shared with Greg, for fear that Sherlock might read his mind.

 

He needn’t have worried, however. Sherlock’s notions of romance were all innocent. 

 

“Oh, and dream in too, Mycroft,” he said. “And you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things. I’m going to put these boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table.”

 

“Mind you don’t drop leaves all over the stairs then. I’m going to a meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Sherlock, and I won’t likely be home before dark. You’ll have to get Greg his supper, so mind you don’t forget to put the tea to draw until you sit down at the table as you did last time.”

 

“It was dreadful of me to forget,” said Sherlock apologetically, “but that was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it crowded other things out. Greg was so good. He never scolded a bit. He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so he didn’t find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story, Mycroft. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and Greg said he couldn’t tell where the join came in.”

 

“Greg would think it all right, Sherlock, if you took a notion to get up and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about you this time. And — I don’t really know if I’m doing right — it may make you more addlepated than ever — but you can ask Molly to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.”

 

“Oh, Mycroft!” Sherlock clasped his hands. “How perfectly lovely! You _are_ able to imagine things after all or else you’d never have understood how I’ve longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish. No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh, Mycroft, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?”

 

“No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use that except for the minister or the Aids. You’ll put down the old brown tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves. It’s time it was being used anyhow. And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the gingersnaps.”

 

“I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea,” said Sherlock, shutting his eyes ecstatically. “And asking Molly if she takes sugar! I know she doesn’t but of course I’ll ask her just as if I didn’t know. And then pressing her to take another piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Mycroft, it’s a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the parlour to sit?”

 

“No. The sitting-room will do for you and your company. But there’s a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night. It’s on the second shelf of the sitting-room closet and you and Molly can have it if you like, and a cookie to eat with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Greg’ll be late coming in to tea since he’s hauling potatoes to the vessel.”

 

Sherlock flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad’s Bubble and up the spruce path to Orchard Slope, to ask Molly to tea. As a result, just after Mycroft had driven off to Carmody, Molly came over, dressed in her second-best dress, and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Sherlock, dressed in his second best dress, as primly opened it, they shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Molly had been taken to the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room, toes in position.

 

“How is your mother?” inquired Sherlock politely, just as if he had not seen Mrs. Hooper picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirits.

 

“She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Lestrade is hauling potatoes to the _Lily Sands_ this afternoon, is he?” said Molly, who had ridden down to Mr. Robert Hawkins’s that morning in Greg’s cart.

 

“Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father’s crop is good too.”

 

“It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?”

 

“Oh, ever so many,” said Sherlock forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly. “Let’s go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings, Molly. Mycroft says we can have all that are left on the tree. Mycroft is very generous. He said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea. But it isn’t good manners to tell your company what you are going to give them, so I won’t tell you what he said we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it’s a bright red colour. I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They taste twice as good as any other colour.”

 

The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that they spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared the green, and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could. Molly had much to tell Sherlock of what went on in school. She had to sit with Mary Morstan and she hated it; Mary squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made her — Molly’s — blood run cold. Everybody missed Sherlock so and wished she’d come to school again; and John Watson — 

 

But Sherlock didn’t want to hear about John Watson. He jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.

 

Sherlock looked on the second shelf of the sitting-room pantry, but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there. A thorough search revealed it away back on the top shelf. Sherlock put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.

 

“Now, please help yourself, Molly,” he said politely. “I don’t believe I’ll have any just now. I don’t feel as if I wanted any after all those apples.”

 

Molly poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.

 

“That’s awfully nice raspberry cordial, Sherlock,” she said. “I didn’t know raspberry cordial was so nice.”

 

“I’m really glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I’m going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a person’s mind when they’re keeping house, aren’t there?”

 

When Sherlock came back from the kitchen, Molly was drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Sherlock, she offered no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were generous ones, and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.

 

“The nicest I ever drank,” said Molly. “It’s ever so much nicer than Mrs. Donovan’s, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn’t taste a bit like hers.”

 

“I should think Mycroft’s raspberry cordial would probably be much nicer than Mrs. Donovan’s,” said Sherlock loyally. “Mycroft is a famous cook. He is trying to teach me to cook, but I assure you, Molly, it is uphill work. There’s so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so essential to cakes, you know. 

 

“Mycroft was very cross and I don’t wonder. I’m a great trial to him. He was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Mycroft said there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Molly, but I was thinking of other things, and I forgot. 

 

“I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Molly, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Mycroft was out milking and I fully intended to ask him when he came in if I should give the sauce to the pigs; but somehow I never thought about the pudding sauce again. 

 

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Smallwood from Spencervale came here that morning. You know they are very stylish people, especially Mrs. Smallwood. When Mycroft called me in, dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Smallwood to think I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn’t pretty. Everything went right until I saw Mycroft coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the pitcher of pudding sauce _warmed up_ , in the other. 

 

“Molly, that was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in my place and shrieked out ‘Mycroft, you mustn’t use that pudding sauce. There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.’ 

 

“Oh, Molly, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred. Mrs. Smallwood just _looked_ at me and I thought I would sink through the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have thought of us. Mycroft turned red as fire but he never said a word — then. He just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry preserves. He even offered me some, but I couldn’t swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on my head. After Mrs. Smallwood went away, Mycroft gave me a dreadful scolding. Why, Molly, what is the matter?”

 

Molly had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her hands to her head.

 

“I’m — I’m awful sick,” she said, a little thickly. “I — I — must go right home.”

 

“Oh, you mustn’t dream of going home without your tea,” cried Sherlock in distress. “I’ll get it right off — I’ll go and put the tea down this very minute.”

 

“I must go home,” repeated Molly, stupidly but determinedly.

 

“Let me get you a lunch anyhow,” implored Sherlock. “Let me give you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for a little while and you’ll be better. Where do you feel bad?”

 

“I must go home,” said Molly, and that was all she would say. 

 

In vain Sherlock pleaded.

 

“I never heard of company going home without tea,” he mourned. “Oh, Molly, do you suppose that it’s possible you’re taking the smallpox? If you are I’ll go and nurse you, you can depend on that. I’ll never forsake you. But I do wish you’d stay till after tea. Where do you feel bad?”

 

“I’m awful dizzy,” said Molly.

 

And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Sherlock, with tears of disappointment in his eyes, got Molly’s hat and went with her as far as the Hooper yard fence. Then he wept all the way back to Green Gables, where he sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for Greg, with all the zest gone out of the performance.

 

The next day was Sunday, and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till dusk, Sherlock did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon Mycroft sent him down to Mrs. Donovan’s on an errand. In a very short space of time Sherlock came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down his cheeks. Into the house he dashed and flung himself face downward on the sofa in an agony.

 

“Whatever has gone wrong now, Sherlock?” queried Greg in dismay. 

 

“I do hope you haven’t gone and been saucy to Mrs. Donovan again,” said Mycroft. “Tell us what has happened.”

 

No answer from Sherlock save more tears and stormier sobs!

 

“Sherlock Scott, when I speak to you I want to be answered,” said Mycroft. “Sit right up this very minute and tell us what you are crying about.”

 

Sherlock sat up, tragedy personified.

 

“Mrs. Donovan was up to see Mrs. Hooper today, and Mrs. Hooper was in an awful state,” he wailed. “She says that I got Molly _drunk_ Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad, wicked child and she’s never, never going to let Molly play with me again. Oh, I’m just overcome with woe.”

 

Mycroft and Greg stared in blank amazement.

 

“Got Molly drunk!” Greg said, when he found his voice. “What on earth did you give her?”

 

“Not a thing but raspberry cordial, which Mycroft said I could,” sobbed Sherlock. “I never thought raspberry cordial would get people drunk — not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as Molly did. I didn’t mean to get her drunk.”

 

“Drunk on raspberry cordial? Nonsense!” said Mycroft, marching to the sitting-room pantry. 

 

There on the shelf was a bottle which he at once recognised as one containing some of his homemade currant wine, for which he was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Hooper among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Mycroft remembered that he had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as he had told Sherlock.

 

He went back with the wine bottle in his hand. His face was twitching in spite of himself.

 

“Sherlock, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Molly currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn’t you know the difference yourself?”

 

“I never tasted it,” said Sherlock. “I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so hospitable. Molly got awfully sick and had to go home. Mrs. Hooper told Mrs. Donovan she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Hooper is so indignant. She will never believe that I didn’t do it on purpose.”

 

“I should think she should better punish Molly for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything,” said Mycroft shortly. “Why, three of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down on me for making currant wine.”

 

“There, there, Sherlock,” said Greg. “Don’t cry. I can’t see as you were to blame, although I’m sorry it happened so.”

 

“I must cry,” said Sherlock. “My heart is broken. The stars in their courses fight against me. Molly and I are parted forever. Oh, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship.”

 

“Don’t be foolish, Sherlock,” said Mycroft. “Mrs. Hooper will think better of it when she finds you’re not to blame. I suppose she thinks you’ve done it for a silly joke or something of that sort. You’d best go up this evening and tell her how it was.”

 

“My courage fails me at the thought of facing Molly’s injured mother,” sighed Sherlock. “I wish you’d go, Mycroft. You’re so much more dignified than I am. Likely she’d listen to you quicker than to me.”

 

“Well, I will,” said Mycroft, reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course. “Don’t cry any more, Sherlock. It will be all right.”

 

Mycroft had changed his mind about it being all right by the time he got back from Orchard Slope. Sherlock was watching for him coming and flew to the porch door to meet him.

 

“Oh, Mycroft, I know by your face that it’s been no use,” he said sorrowfully. “Mrs. Hooper won’t forgive me?”

 

“Mrs. Hooper indeed!” snapped Mycroft. “Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw she’s the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you weren’t to blame, but she just simply didn’t believe me. And she rubbed it well in about my currant wine and how I’d always said it couldn’t have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that currant wine wasn’t meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy, I’d sober her up with a right good spanking.”

 

Mycroft whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very much distracted little soul on the porch behind him. Presently Sherlock stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and steadily he took his way down through the clover field, over the log bridge, and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Hooper, coming to the door in answer to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed supplicant on the doorstep.

 

Her face hardened. Mrs. Hooper was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Sherlock had made Molly drunk out of sheer malice, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.

 

“What do you want?” she said stiffly.

 

Sherlock clasped his hands.

 

“Oh, Mrs. Hooper, please forgive me. I did not mean to intoxicate Molly. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh, please don’t say that you won’t let Molly play with me any more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.”

 

This speech, which would have softened good Mrs. Donovan’s heart in a twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Hooper, except to irritate her still more. She was suspicious of Sherlock’s big words and dramatic gestures, and imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and cruelly:

 

“I don’t think you are a fit little girl for Molly to associate with. You’d better go home and behave yourself.”

 

Sherlock’s lips quivered.

 

“Won’t you let me see Molly just once to say farewell?” he implored.

 

“Molly has gone over to Carmody with her father,” said Mrs. Hooper, going in and shutting the door.

 

Sherlock went back to Green Gables calm with despair.

 

“My last hope is gone,” he told Mycroft and Greg. “I went up and saw Mrs. Hooper myself and she treated me very insultingly. I do _not_ think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray, and I haven’t much hope that that’ll do much good, because I do not believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Hooper.”

 

“Sherlock, you shouldn’t say such things” rebuked Mycroft, striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which he was dismayed to find growing upon him. 

 

And indeed, when he and Greg talked it over that night, he did laugh heartily over Sherlock’s tribulations. But when he slipped out of bed and went into the east gable to check on the child, Mycroft found that Sherlock had cried himself to sleep, and an unaccustomed softness crept into his heart.

 

“Poor little soul,” he murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the child’s tear-stained face. Then he bent down and kissed the flushed cheek on the pillow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How will Sherlock possibly survive without his best friend? Find out next week, when Sherlock finds a New Interest in Life.


	15. A New Interest in Life

The next afternoon, Sherlock, bending over his patchwork at the kitchen window, happened to glance out and beheld Molly down by the Dryad’s Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Sherlock was out of the house and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in his expressive eyes. But the hope faded when he saw Molly’s dejected countenance.

 

“Your mother hasn’t relented?” he gasped.

 

Molly shook her head mournfully.

 

“No; and oh, Sherlock, she says I’m never to play with you again. I’ve cried and cried and I told her it wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t any use. I had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say good-bye to you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and she’s timing me by the clock.”

 

“Ten minutes isn’t very long to say an eternal farewell in,” said Sherlock tearfully. “Oh, Molly, will you promise faithfully never to forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may come along?”

 

“Indeed I will,” sobbed Molly, “and I’ll never have another bosom friend — I don’t want to have. I couldn’t love anybody as I love you.”

 

“Oh, Molly,” cried Sherlock, clasping his hands, “do you _love_ me?”

 

“Why, of course I do. Didn’t you know that?”

 

“No.” Sherlock drew a long breath. “I thought you _liked_ me, of course, but I never hoped you _loved_ me. Why, Molly, I didn’t think anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is wonderful! It’s a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness of a path severed from thee, Molly. Oh, just say it once again.”

 

“I love you devotedly, Sherlock,” said Molly staunchly, “and I always will, you may be sure of that.”

 

“And I will always love thee, Molly,” said Sherlock, solemnly extending his hand. “In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Molly, wilt thou give me a lock of thy hair in parting to treasure forevermore?”

 

“Have you got anything to cut it with?” queried Molly, wiping away the tears which Sherlock’s affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and returning to practicalities.

 

“Yes. I’ve got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket, fortunately,” said Sherlock. He solemnly clipped one of Molly’s curls. “Fare thee well, my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers, though living side by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.”

 

Sherlock stood and watched Molly out of sight, mournfully waving his hand to her whenever she turned to look back. Then he returned to the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this dramatic parting.

 

“It is all over,” he informed Mycroft and Greg. “I shall never have another friend. I’m really worse off than ever before, for I haven’t even Victor Trevor now. And even if I had, it wouldn’t be the same. Somehow, an imaginary friend wouldn’t be satisfying after a real friend. Molly and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I could think of and said ‘thou’ and ‘thee.’ Molly gave me a lock of her hair and I’m going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don’t believe I’ll live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her Mrs. Hooper may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Molly come to my funeral.”

 

“I don’t think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Sherlock,” said Mycroft unsympathetically.

 

Mycroft would have been much more sympathetic, however, if he had heard the entire conversation between the children — especially the part where Sherlock told Molly that he didn’t think anyone could love him, since no one had ever loved him as long as he could remember. 

 

Though he had never admitted it — even to himself — Mycroft was growing to love Sherlock; but he wouldn’t dream of telling the child so. At the same time, it was obvious to him that Greg loved Sherlock beyond all reason. However, Greg was a man more inclined to demonstrate his feelings than to speak of them. Still, that Sherlock, for all his powers of observation, could have failed to notice that he was living in a home surrounded by love would have puzzled Mycroft excessively. 

 

…

 

The following Monday, Sherlock surprised Mycroft and Greg by coming down from his room with his basket of books on his arm and his lips set into a line of determination.

 

“I’m going back to school,” he announced. “That is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In school I can look at her and muse over days departed.”

 

“You’d better muse over your lessons and sums,” said Mycroft, concealing his delight at this development of the situation. “If you’re going back to school I hope we’ll hear no more of breaking slates over people’s heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do just what your teacher tells you.”

 

“I’ll try to be a model pupil,” agreed Sherlock dolefully. “There won’t be much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Anderson said Janine Hawkins was a model pupil and there isn’t a spark of imagination or life in her. She is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I’m going round by the road. I couldn’t bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should weep bitter tears if I did.”

 

Sherlock was welcomed back to school with open arms. His imagination had been sorely missed in games, his voice in the singing and his dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. The girls all made much of him.

 

“It’s so nice to be appreciated,” sighed Sherlock rapturously to Greg that night.

 

The girls were not the only scholars who “appreciated” him. When Sherlock went to his seat after dinner hour — he had been told by Mr. Anderson to sit with the model student Janine Hawkins — he found on his desk a big luscious “strawberry apple.” Sherlock caught it up all ready to take a bite when he remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew was in the old Watson orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters. Sherlock dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and ostentatiously wiped his fingers on his handkerchief. The apple lay untouched on his desk until the next morning, when Jim Moriarty, who was the first to arrive, took possession of it. 

 

Sebastian Wilkes’ slate pencil, gorgeously adorned with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary pencils cost only one, which he sent up to Sherlock after dinner hour, met with a more favourable reception. Sherlock was graciously pleased to accept it, and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Anderson kept him in after school to rewrite it.

 

However, the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Molly Hooper, who was sitting with Mary Morstan, embittered Sherlock’s little triumph.

 

“Molly might just have smiled at me once, I think,” he mourned to Greg that night. 

 

But the next morning a note most fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel, were passed across to Sherlock.

 

_Dear Sherlock,_

_Mother says I’m not to play with you or talk to you even in school. It isn’t my fault and don’t be cross at me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don’t like Mary Morstan one bit. I made you one of the new bookmarks out of red tissue paper. They are awfully fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make them. When you look at it remember me._

_Your true friend,_

_Molly Hooper_

 

Sherlock read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to the other side of the school.

 

_Dear Molly,_

_Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your mother. I shall keep your lovely present forever. Janine Hawkins is a very nice girl — although she has no imagination — but after having been your bosom friend I cannot be Janine’s._

_Yours until death us do part,_

_Sherlock Scott_

 

Mycroft pessimistically expected more trouble since Sherlock had again begun to go to school, but none developed. Perhaps Sherlock caught something of the “model” spirit from Janine Hawkins. He flung himself into his studies heart and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by John Watson. 

 

The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good-natured on John’s side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Sherlock, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges. He was as intense in his hatreds as in his loves. He would not stoop to admit that he meant to rival John in schoolwork, because that would have been to acknowledge John’s existence, which Sherlock persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there, and honours fluctuated between them. 

 

Now John was head of the spelling class; now Sherlock, with a toss of his wild curls, spelled him down. One morning John had all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard on the roll of honour; the next morning Sherlock, having wrestled wildly with decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they were tied, and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad as a ‘Take Notice’ and Sherlock’s mortification was as evident as John’s satisfaction. 

 

When the written examinations at the end of each month were held the suspense was terrible. The first month John came out three marks ahead. The second Sherlock beat him by five. But his triumph was marred by the fact that John congratulated him heartily before the whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to Sherlock if John had felt the sting of his defeat.

 

Mr. Anderson might not be a very good teacher, but a pupil so inflexibly determined on learning as Sherlock was could hardly escape making progress under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term, Sherlock and John were both promoted into the fifth class, and allowed to begin studying the elements of “the branches” — by which Latin, French, geometry, algebra, and astronomy were meant. In astronomy Sherlock met his Waterloo.

 

“It’s perfectly awful stuff, Mycroft,” he groaned. “There is no scope for imagination in it at all. I love looking at the stars, but I’m sure I’ll never be able to make head or tail of which heavenly bodies revolve or rotate or anything. Mr. Anderson says I’m the worst dunce he ever saw at astronomy. And John — I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely mortifying.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and leaving kind comments on this fic. You make me ridiculously happy. :D


	16. Sherlock to the Rescue

All things great are wound up with all things little. At first glance it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian Premier to include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much of anything to do with the fortunes of little Sherlock Scott at Green Gables. But it had.

 

It was in January the Premier came, to address his loyal supporters and such of his non-supporters as chose to be present at the monster mass meeting held in Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on the Premier’s side of politics, so on the night of the meeting nearly all the men and a goodly proportion of the women had gone to town thirty miles away. 

 

Sally Donovan had gone too. Sally Donovan was a red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics from the Premier. So she went to town and took her husband (Thomas would be useful in looking after the horse) and Mycroft Holmes with her for an overnight stay. 

 

Hence, while Mycroft and Sally were enjoying themselves hugely at the mass meeting, Sherlock and Greg had the cheerful kitchen at Green Gables all to themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned stove, and blue-white frost crystals were shining on the windowpanes. Greg nodded over a _Farmers’ Advocate_ on the sofa. 

 

Sherlock, at the table, studied his lessons with grim determination, despite sundry wistful glances at the clock shelf, where lay a new book that Janine Hawkins had lent him that day. Janine had assured him that it was warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to that effect, and Sherlock’s fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that would mean John Watson’s triumph on the morrow. Sherlock turned his back on the book and tried to imagine it wasn’t there.

 

“Greg, did you ever study astronomy when you went to school?”

 

“No, I didn’t,” said Greg, coming out of his doze with a start.

 

“I wish you had,” sighed Sherlock, “because then you’d be able to sympathise with me. You can’t sympathise properly if you’ve never studied it. It is casting a cloud over my whole life. I’m such a dunce at it, Greg.”

 

“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Greg soothingly. “Mr. Anderson told me last week in Blair’s store at Carmody that you were the smartest scholar in school and were making rapid progress. ‘Rapid progress’ were his very words. Lots of folks say Phillip Anderson isn’t much of a teacher, but I guess he’s all right.”

 

Greg would have thought anyone who praised Sherlock was “all right.”

 

“I wonder how Mycroft and Mrs. Donovan are enjoying themselves,” said Sherlock. “Mrs. Donovan says Canada is going to the dogs the way things are being run at Ottawa and that it’s an awful warning to the electors. She says if women were allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change. Is that true, Greg?”

 

“It might be. Women can be pretty clever.”

 

“Did you ever court a woman, Greg?”

 

“Well… no, I never did,” said Greg, who had certainly never thought of such a thing in his whole existence.

 

Sherlock reflected with his chin in his hands.

 

“Courting must be rather interesting, don’t you think, Greg? Irene Adler says when she grows up she’s going to have ever so many beaus on the string and have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too exciting. I think it would be better to have just one in his right mind. 

 

“But Irene Adler knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big sisters, and Mrs. Donovan says the Adler girls have gone off like hot cakes. Mr. Anderson goes up to see Prissy Adler nearly every evening. He says it is to help her with her lessons, but Miranda Stamford is studying for Queen’s too, and I should think she needed help a lot more than Prissy because she’s ever so much stupider, but he never goes to help her in the evenings at all. There are a great many things in this world that I can’t understand very well, Greg.”

 

“There are some things that are very difficult to understand,” acknowledged Greg.

 

“Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won’t allow myself to open that new book Janine lent me until I’m through. But it’s a terrible temptation. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there just as plain. Janine said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book that makes me cry. But I think I’ll carry that book into the sitting room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must _not_ give it to me, Greg, until my lessons are done, not even if I implore you on my bended knees. It’s all very well to say resist temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get the key. And then I shall run down to the cellar and get some russet apples. Wouldn’t you like some russets?”

 

“I suppose I would,” said Greg, who never ate russets but knew Sherlock’s weakness for them.

 

Just as Sherlock emerged triumphantly from the cellar with his plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside, and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Molly Hooper, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. 

 

Sherlock promptly let go of his candle and plate in his surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted wax, the next day, by Mycroft, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.

 

“Whatever is the matter, Molly?” cried Sherlock. “Has your mother relented at last?”

 

“Oh, Sherlock, do come quick,” implored Molly nervously. “Minnie May is awfully sick — she’s got croup. Father and Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie May is awful bad and young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do — and oh, Sherlock, I’m so scared!”

 

Greg, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, and slipped past Molly and away into the darkness of the yard.

 

“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,” said Sherlock, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as if he’d said so. Greg and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all.”

 

“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Molly. “I know that Dr. Blair went to Charlottetown, and I guess Dr. Spencer would go, too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Donovan is away. Oh, Sherlock!”

 

“Don’t cry, Molly,” said Sherlock cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for croup. At the orphan asylum, the little ones all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle — you mayn’t have any at your house. Come on now.”

 

The two children hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lover’s Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Sherlock, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May, was far from being insensible to the excitement of the situation and to the sweetness of once more being with Molly. He thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through the mysterious and lovely darkness with a bosom friend who had been so long estranged.

 

Molly’s sister, Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa, feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl, whom Mrs. Hooper had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.

 

Sherlock went to work with skill and promptness.

 

“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Molly, there isn’t more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any sense. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Molly. I’m going to give her a dose of ipecac first of all.”

 

Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac, but Sherlock was determined. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many times during the long, anxious night, while the two children worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital full of croupy babies.

 

It was three o’clock in the morning when Greg came with a doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping soundly.

 

“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Sherlock. “She got worse and worse until I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I said to myself — not to Molly or Mary Joe, because I didn’t want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings — ‘This is the last lingering hope and I fear, tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.”

 

“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Sherlock as if he were thinking some things that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Hooper.

 

“That little girl they have over at the Holmes and Lestrade place is as smart as they make them. I tell you, she saved that baby’s life, for it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me.”

 

Sherlock had gone home in the white-frosted winter morning, heavy-eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Greg as they crossed the field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the Lover’s Lane maples.

 

“Oh, Greg, isn’t it a wonderful morning? I’m so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad I observed the treatment of so many croupy little ones at the orphan asylum. If I hadn’t, I mightn’t have known what to do for Minnie May. But, oh, Greg, I’m so sleepy. I can’t go to school. I just know I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I’d be so stupid. But I hate to stay home, for John — some of the others will get head of the class, and it’s so hard to get up again — although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven’t you?”

 

“I guess you’ll manage all right,” said Greg, looking at Sherlock’s white little face and the dark shadows under his eyes. “You just go right to bed and have a good sleep. I’ll do all the chores.”

 

Sherlock accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when he awoke and descended to the kitchen where Mycroft, who had arrived home in the meantime, was sitting.

 

“Oh, did you see the Premier?” exclaimed Sherlock at once. “What did he look like Mycroft?”

 

“Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,” said Mycroft. “Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. Sally Donovan, of course, had no use for him. 

 

“Your dinner is in the oven, Sherlock, and you can get yourself some blue plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you’re hungry. Greg has been telling me about last night. I must say it was fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn’t have had any idea myself, for I never saw a case of croup. There now, never mind talking till you’ve had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you’re just full up with speeches, but they’ll keep.”

 

Mycroft had something to tell Sherlock, but he did not tell it just then for he knew if he did Sherlock’s consequent excitement would lift him clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner. Not until Sherlock had finished his saucer of blue plums did Mycroft say:

 

“Mrs. Hooper was here this afternoon, Sherlock. She wanted to see you, but I wouldn’t wake you up. She says you saved Minnie May’s life, and she is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She says she knows now you didn’t mean to get Molly drunk, and she hopes you’ll forgive her and be good friends with Molly again. You’re to go over this evening if you like, for Molly can’t stir outside the door on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Sherlock Scott, for pity’s sake don’t fly up into the air.”

 

The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Sherlock’s expression and attitude as he sprang to his feet, his face irradiated with the flame of his spirit.

 

“Oh, Mycroft, can I go right now — without washing my dishes? I’ll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment.”

 

“Yes, yes, run along,” said Mycroft indulgently. “Sherlock Scott — are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you! — I might as well call to the wind. He’s gone without a cap or wrap. It’ll be a mercy if he doesn’t catch his death of cold.”

 

Sherlock came dancing home in the purple winter twilight.

 

“You see before you a perfectly happy person,” he announced to Mycroft and Greg. “I’m perfectly happy — yes, in spite of my curly hair. Just at present I have a soul above curly hair. Mrs. Hooper kissed me and cried and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed, but I just said as politely as I could, ‘I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Hooper. I assure you once and for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Molly and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.’ That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn’t it? I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Hooper’s head. 

 

“Molly and I had a lovely afternoon. Molly showed me a new fancy crochet stitch her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. We’re going to ask Mr. Anderson to let us sit together in school again, and Mary Morstan can go with Janine Hawkins. 

 

“We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Hooper had the very best china set out, just as if I was real company. I can’t tell you what a thrill it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before. And we had fruit cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of preserves. And Mrs. Hooper asked me if I took tea and said ‘Pa, why don’t you pass the biscuits to Sherlock?’ It must be lovely to be grown up, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” said Mycroft, with a brief sigh.

 

“Well, anyway, when I am grown up,” said Sherlock decidedly, “I’m always going to talk to children as if they were, too, and I’ll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one’s feelings. 

 

“After tea Molly and I made taffy. The taffy wasn’t very good, I suppose because neither Molly nor I had ever made any before. Molly left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and let it burn; and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away. But the making of it was splendid fun. 

 

“Then when I left Mrs. Hooper asked me to come over as often as I could. Oh, the world is a wonderful place!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh... It seems all is right with the world - or at least Avonlea - again. Don't count on the peace lasting for long, though. Next week, I'm afraid Sherlock will do Something Inappropriate.


	17. Something Inappropriate

Mycroft, can I go over to see Molly just for a minute?” asked Sherlock, running breathlessly down from the east gable one February evening.

 

“I don’t see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for,” said Mycroft shortly. “You and Molly walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don’t think you’re very badly off to see her again.”

 

“But she wants to see me,” pleaded Sherlock. “She has something very important to tell me.”

 

“How do you know she has?”

 

“Because she just signalled to me from her window. We have arranged a way to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the window sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Mycroft.”

 

“I’ll warrant you it was,” said Mycroft emphatically. “And the next thing you’ll be setting fire to the curtains with your signalling nonsense.”

 

“Oh, we’re very careful, Mycroft. And it’s so interesting. Two flashes mean, ‘Are you there?’ Three mean ‘yes’ and four ‘no.’ Five mean, ‘Come over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal.’ Molly has just signalled five flashes, and I’m really suffering to know what it is.”

 

“Well, you needn’t suffer any longer,” said Mycroft sarcastically. “You can go, but you’re to be back here in just ten minutes, remember that.”

 

Sherlock did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost him to confine the discussion of Molly’s important communication within the limits of ten minutes. But at least he had made good use of them.

 

“Oh, Mycroft, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Molly’s birthday. Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from school and stay all night with her. Her cousins are coming over from Newbridge in a big sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at the hall tomorrow night, and they are going to take Molly and me to the concert — if you’ll let me go, that is. You will, won’t you, Mycroft? Oh, I feel so excited.”

 

“You can calm down then, because you’re not going.”

 

“I’m sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,” pleaded Sherlock.

 

“I’m not saying it isn’t. The Debating Club is not the issue. You’re not going to spend the night at Molly’s house.”

 

“But it’s such a very special occasion,” mourned Sherlock, on the verge of tears. “Molly has only one birthday in a year. It isn’t as if birthdays were common things, Mycroft. And we didn’t do _anything_ special when _I_ turned twelve. Please, mayn’t I go?”

 

“You heard what I said, Sherlock, didn’t you? Take off your boots now and go to bed. It’s past eight.”

 

“There’s just one more thing, Mycroft,” said Sherlock, with the air of producing the last shot in his locker. “Mrs. Hooper told Molly that we might sleep in the spare room bed. Think of the honour of your little Sherlock being put in the spare room bed.”

 

“It’s an honour you’ll have to get along without. It would not be in any way appropriate. Now go to bed, Sherlock, and don’t let me hear another word out of you.”

 

When Sherlock, with tears rolling over his cheeks, had gone sorrowfully upstairs, Greg, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly: “Mycroft, I think you ought to let Sherlock go.”

 

“You’d think I ought to let him go to the moon if he took the notion, I’ve no doubt,” was Mycroft’s amiable rejoinder. “But you promised not to interfere with my methods of bringing him up.”

 

“It’s not interfering to have my own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Sherlock go.”

 

“Impossible,” retorted Mycroft. “We can’t allow him to sleep in a bed with a girl!”

 

“They’re just children. I’m sure Sherlock would never dream of doing anything inappropriate.”

 

“He’s done something inappropriate every single day since he arrived at Green Gables.”

 

“You know what I mean.”

 

“I do,” conceded Mycroft. “And I agree with you, as far as that goes. But still, Greg, it’s too much of a risk. What if Molly — or, God forbid, Mrs. Hooper — discovers he’s a boy?”

 

“I think you ought to let him go,” repeated Greg firmly. Argument was not his strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly was.

 

Mycroft gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. 

 

The next morning, when Sherlock was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry, Greg paused on his way out to the barn to say to Mycroft again: “I think you ought to let Sherlock go, Mycroft.”

 

For a moment, Mycroft looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then he yielded to the inevitable and said tartly: “Very well, he can go, since nothing else will please you.”

 

Sherlock flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand.

 

“Oh, Mycroft, Mycroft, say those blessed words again.”

 

“I guess once is enough to say them. This is Greg’s doing, and I wash my hands of it. If Mrs. Hooper discovers you’re a boy and has you tarred and feathered, don’t blame me, blame Greg. Sherlock Scott, you’re dripping greasy water all over the floor. I never saw such a careless child.”

 

“Oh, I know I’m a great trial to you, Mycroft,” said Sherlock repentantly. “I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don’t make, although I might. I’ll get some sand and scrub up the spots before I go to school. Oh, Mycroft, my heart was just set on spending the night in the Hooper’s spare room with Molly. You didn’t know just how I felt about it, but you see Greg did. Greg understands me, and it’s so nice to be understood, Mycroft.”

 

Sherlock was too excited to do himself justice as to lessons that morning in school. John Watson spelled him down in class and left him clear out of sight in mental arithmetic. Sherlock’s consequent humiliation was less than it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the spare room bed. He and Molly talked so constantly about it all day that with a stricter teacher than Mr. Anderson dire disgrace must inevitably have been their portion.

 

Sherlock felt that he could not have borne it if he had not been going to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several smaller free entertainments; but this was to be a big affair, admission ten cents, in aid of the library. The Avonlea young people had been practicing for weeks, and all the scholars were especially interested in it by reason of older brothers and sisters who were going to take part. 

 

For Sherlock, the real excitement began with the dismissal of school and increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive ecstasy. Molly’s cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all crowded into the big sleigh, among straw and furry robes. Sherlock revelled in the drive to the hall, slipping along over the satin-smooth roads with the snow crisping under the runners. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed like the mirth of wood elves, came from every quarter.

 

“Oh, Molly,” breathed Sherlock, squeezing Molly’s mittened hand under the fur robe, “isn’t it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really look the same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me it must show in my looks.”

 

“You look awfully nice,” said Molly, who having just received a compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on. “You’ve got the loveliest colour.”

 

The program that night was a series of “thrills” for at least one listener in the audience, and, as Sherlock assured Molly, every succeeding thrill was thrillier than the last. Only one number on the program failed to interest him. When John Watson recited “Bingen on the Rhine” Sherlock picked up Rhoda Murray’s library book and read it until he had finished, whereupon he sat rigidly stiff and motionless while Molly clapped her hands until they tingled.

 

It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but with the exceedingly sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody seemed asleep and the house was dark and silent. Sherlock and Molly tiptoed into the parlour, a long narrow room out of which the spare room opened. It was pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the grate.

 

“Let’s undress here,” said Molly. “It’s so nice and warm.”

 

“Hasn’t it been a delightful time?” sighed Sherlock rapturously, moving into the darkest corner of the room and turning his back to Molly as he quickly slipped into his long nightgown. “It must be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we will ever be asked to do it?”

 

“Yes, of course, someday. They’re always wanting the big scholars to recite. John Watson does often, and he’s only two years older than us. Oh, Sherlock, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line,

_‘There’s Another, not a sister,’_

he looked right down at you.”

 

“Molly,” said Sherlock with dignity, “you are my bosom friend, but I cannot allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready for bed? Let’s run a race and see who’ll get to the bed first.”

 

The suggestion appealed to Molly. The two little figures flew down the long room, through the spare room door, and bounded on the bed at the same moment. And then — something — moved beneath them, there was a gasp and a cry — and somebody said in muffled accents:  “Merciful goodness!”

 

Sherlock and Molly were never able to tell just how they got off that bed and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.

 

“Oh, who was it — _what_ was it?” whispered Sherlock, his teeth chattering with cold and fright.

 

“It was Aunt Martha,” said Molly, gasping with laughter. “Oh, Sherlock, it was Aunt Martha, however she came to be there. Oh, and I know she will be furious. It’s dreadful — it’s really dreadful — but did you ever know anything so funny, Sherlock?”

 

“Who is your Aunt Martha?”

 

“She’s mother’s aunt and she lives in Charlottetown. She’s awfully old — seventy anyhow — and I don’t believe she was _ever_ a little girl. We were expecting her out for a visit, but not so soon. She’s awfully prim and proper and she’ll scold dreadfully about this, I know. Well, we’ll have to sleep with Minnie May — and you can’t think how she kicks.”

 

Aunt Martha did not appear at the early breakfast the next morning. Mrs. Hooper smiled kindly at the two little girls.

 

“Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Martha had come and that you would have to go upstairs after all, but I was so tired I fell asleep. I hope you didn’t disturb your aunt, Molly.”

 

Molly preserved a discreet silence, but she and Sherlock exchanged furtive smiles of guilty amusement across the table. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will there be any repercussions from Sherlock's (only mildly) inappropriate behavior? Find out next week, when he discovers An Unexpected Kindred Spirit.


	18. An Unexpected Kindred Spirit

Sherlock hurried home after breakfast and so remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which presently resulted in the Hooper household, until the late afternoon, when he went down to Mrs. Donovan’s on an errand for Mycroft.

 

“So you and Molly nearly frightened her poor old aunt to death last night?” said Mrs. Donovan severely, but with a twinkle in her eye. “Mrs. Hooper was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmody. She’s feeling extremely worried over it. The poor old lady was in a terrible temper when she got up this morning — and her temper is no joke, I can tell you that. She wouldn’t speak to Molly at all.”

 

“It wasn’t Molly’s fault,” said Sherlock contritely. “It was mine. I suggested racing to see who would get into bed first.”

 

“I knew it!” said Mrs. Donovan, with the exultation of a correct guesser. “I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it’s made a nice lot of trouble, that’s what. The old lady came out to stay for a month, but she declares she won’t stay another day and is going right back to town tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She’d have gone today if they could have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter’s music lessons for Molly, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The Hoopers must feel cut up. That old woman is rich and they’d like to keep on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Hooper didn’t say just that to me, but I’m a pretty good judge of human nature, that’s what.”

 

“I’m such an unlucky girl,” mourned Sherlock. “I’m always getting into scrapes myself and getting my best friends — people I’d shed my heart’s blood for — into them too. Can you tell me why it is so, Mrs. Donovan?”

 

“It’s because you’re too heedless and impulsive, child, that’s what. You never stop to think — whatever comes into your head to say or do you say or do it without a moment’s reflection.”

 

“Oh, but that’s the best of it,” protested Sherlock. “Something just flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. I do think a great deal — almost all the time — but if you stop to think over every little thing you spoil it all. Haven’t you ever felt that yourself, Mrs. Donovan?”

 

No, Mrs. Donovan had not. She shook her head sagely.

 

“You must learn to slow down, Sherlock, that’s what. The proverb you need to go by is ‘Look before you leap’ — especially into spare room beds.”

 

Mrs. Donovan laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Sherlock remained pensive. He saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to his eyes appeared very serious. 

 

When he left Mrs. Donovan’s, he took his way across the crusted fields to Orchard Slope. Molly met him at the kitchen door.

 

“Your Aunt Martha was very cross about it, wasn’t she?” whispered Sherlock.

 

“Yes,” answered Molly, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive glance over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. “She was fairly dancing with rage, Sherlock. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed of the way they had brought me up. She says she won’t stay and I’m sure I don’t care. But Father and Mother do.”

 

“Why didn’t you tell them it was my fault?” demanded Sherlock.

 

“It’s likely I’d do such a thing, isn’t it?” said Molly with just scorn. “I’m no telltale, Sherlock Scott, and anyhow I was just as much to blame as you.”

 

“Well, I’m going in to tell her myself,” said Sherlock resolutely.

 

Molly stared.

 

“Sherlock Scott, you’d never! Why — she’ll eat you alive!”

 

“Don’t frighten me any more than I am frightened,” implored Sherlock. “I’d rather walk up to a cannon’s mouth. But I’ve got to do it, Molly. It was my fault and I’ve got to confess. I’ve had practice in confessing, fortunately.”

 

“Well, she’s in the room,” said Molly. “You can go in if you want to. I wouldn’t dare. And I don’t believe you’ll do a bit of good.”

 

With this encouragement Sherlock bearded the lion in its den — that is to say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly. A sharp “Come in” followed.

 

Aunt Martha, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see Molly, and beheld a white-faced child whose great eyes were brimmed up with a mixture of desperate courage and shrinking terror.

 

“Who are you?” she demanded, without ceremony.

 

“I’m Sherlock of Green Gables,” said the small visitor tremulously, clasping his hands with his characteristic gesture, “and I’ve come to confess, if you please.”

 

“Confess what?”

 

“That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I suggested it. Molly would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure. Molly is a very ladylike girl. So you must see how unjust it is to blame her.”

 

“Oh, I must, must I? I rather think Molly did her share of the jumping at least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!”

 

“But we were only in fun,” persisted Sherlock. “I think you ought to forgive us, now that we’ve apologised. And anyhow, please forgive Molly and let her have her music lessons. Molly’s heart is set on her music lessons, and I know too well what it is to set your heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be cross with me. I’ve been so used in my early days to having people cross at me that I can endure it much better than Molly can.”

 

Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady’s eyes by this time and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said severely:

 

“I don’t think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun. Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You don’t know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.”

 

“I don’t _know_ , but I can _imagine_ ,” said Sherlock eagerly. “I’m sure it must have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side of it too. Have _you_ any imagination? If you have, just put yourself in our place. We didn’t know there was anybody in that bed and you nearly scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And then we couldn’t sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honour.”

 

All the snap had gone by this time. The old lady actually laughed — a sound which caused Molly, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen outside, to give a great gasp of relief.

 

“I’m afraid my imagination is a little rusty — it’s so long since I used it,” she said. “I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down here and tell me about yourself.”

 

“I am very sorry I can’t,” said Sherlock firmly. “I would like to, because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred spirit, although you don’t look very much like it. But it is my duty to go home to Mr. Mycroft Holmes and Mr. Greg Lestrade. Mr. Mycroft Holmes and Mr. Greg Lestrade are two very kind gentlemen who have taken me to bring up properly. They are doing their best, but it is very discouraging work. You must not blame them because I jumped on the bed. But before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive Molly and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.”

 

“I think perhaps I will, if you will come over and talk to me occasionally,” she replied.

 

That evening, Aunt Martha gave Molly a silver bangle bracelet and told the senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.

 

“I’ve made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better acquainted with that Sherlock-girl,” she said frankly. “She amuses me, and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.”

 

Mycroft’s only comment when he heard of the debacle was, “I told you so.” This was for Greg’s benefit.

 

Aunt Martha stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest than usual, for Sherlock kept her in good humour. They became firm friends.

 

When she went away she said: “Remember, you Sherlock-girl, when you come to town you’re to visit me and I’ll put you in my very sparest spare room bed to sleep.”

 

“Aunt Martha was a kindred spirit, after all,” Sherlock confided to Mycroft. “You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but she is. You don’t find it right out at first, as in Greg’s case, but after a while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fortunately, this was one catastrophe which was easily rectified. Unfortunately, Sherlock won't be so quick to recover from his next disaster. Stay tuned to find out what happens when Sherlock Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour.


	19. Sherlock Comes to Grief in an Affair of Honour

“Dear me, there’s nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as Mrs. Donovan says,” remarked Sherlock plaintively to Mycroft and Greg, putting his slate and books down on the kitchen table on the last day of June, along with a very damp handkerchief. “Wasn’t it fortunate that I took an extra handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment that it would be needed.”

 

“I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Anderson that you’d require two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going away,” said Mycroft.

 

“I wasn’t crying because I was fond of him,” said Sherlock indignantly. “I just cried because all the others did. It was Irene Adler who started it. Irene Adler has always declared she hated Mr. Anderson, but just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech she burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one after the other. The boys didn’t cry, but everyone thinks I’m a girl, so I had to cry just as hard as the others.”

 

Greg burst out laughing — and Mycroft, in spite of himself, soon joined in.

 

…

 

Almost a month of summer elapsed without incident. Sherlock’s little mistakes — such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs’ bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie — were not really worth counting; and so it was high time for him to get into fresh trouble of some sort.

 

 At the end of July, Molly Hooper gave a party.

 

“Small and select,” Sherlock assured Mycroft and Greg. “Just a few of the children in our class; and she promised me not to invite John Watson.”

 

They had a very good time, and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when they found themselves in the Hooper garden, a little tired of all their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself. This presently took the form of “daring.”

 

Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers thereof were “dared” to do them would fill a book by themselves.

 

First of all Mike Stamford dared Irene Adler to climb to a certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Irene Adler, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Mike Stamford. Then Jim Moriarty (who Molly swore she hadn’t invited, but who had shown up, all the same) dared Janine Hawkins to hop on her left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right foot to the ground; which Janine Hawkins gamely tried to do, but gave out at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.

 

Jim’s triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted, Sherlock dared him to walk along the top of the board fence which bounded the garden to the east. Now, to “walk” board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Jim Moriarty, if deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking board fences. Jim walked the Hoopers’ fence with an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that wasn’t worth a “dare.” Reluctant admiration greeted his exploit, for most of the other children could appreciate it, having suffered many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Jim descended from his perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Sherlock.

 

Sherlock tossed his wild curls.

 

“I don’t think it’s such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low, board fence,” he said. “I knew a girl at the orphan asylum who could walk the ridgepole of a roof.”

 

“I don’t believe it,” said Jim Moriarty flatly. “I don’t believe anybody could walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn’t, anyhow.”

 

“Couldn’t I?” cried Sherlock rashly.

 

“Then I dare you to do it,” said Jim defiantly. “I dare you to climb up there and walk the ridgepole of the Hoopers’ kitchen roof.”

 

Sherlock turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. He walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen roof. All the fifth-class students said, “Oh!” partly in excitement, partly in dismay.

 

“Don’t you do it, Sherlock,” entreated Molly. “You’ll fall off and be killed. Never mind Jim Moriarty. It isn’t fair to dare anybody to do anything so dangerous.”

 

“I must do it. My honour is at stake,” said Sherlock solemnly. “I shall walk that ridgepole, Molly, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring.”

 

Sherlock climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced himself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that he was uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your cleverness helped you out much. Nevertheless, he managed to take several steps before the catastrophe came. Then he swayed, lost his balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath — all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous, terrified shriek.

 

If Sherlock had tumbled off the roof on the side up which he had ascended, Molly would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and there. Fortunately, he fell on the other side, where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Molly and the others had rushed frantically around the house — except Janine Hawkins, who remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics — they found Sherlock lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.

 

“Sherlock, are you killed?” shrieked Molly, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. “Oh, Sherlock, dear Sherlock, speak just one word to me and tell me if you’re killed.”

 

To the immense relief of everyone, and especially of Jim Moriarty, who, in spite general ill-nature did not want to go through life branded as the boy who was the cause of Sherlock Scott’s early and tragic death, Sherlock sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:

 

“No, Molly, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”

 

“Where?” sobbed Irene Adler. “Oh, where, Sherlock?” 

 

Before Sherlock could answer, Mrs. Hooper appeared on the scene. At sight of her Sherlock tried to scramble to his feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of pain.

 

“What’s the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?” demanded Mrs. Hooper.

 

“My ankle,” gasped Sherlock. “Oh, Molly, please find your father and ask him to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I’m sure I couldn’t hop so far on one foot when Janine couldn’t even hop around the garden.”

 

Mycroft was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when he saw Mr. Hooper coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs. Hooper beside him and a whole procession of children trailing after him. In his arms he carried Sherlock, whose head lay limply against his shoulder.

 

At that moment Mycroft had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that pierced his very heart, he realised what Sherlock had come to mean to him. He would have admitted that he liked Sherlock — nay, that he was very fond of Sherlock. But now Mycroft knew, as he hurried wildly down the slope, that Sherlock was dearer to him than anything else on earth, save Greg himself.

 

“Mr. Hooper, what has happened to her?” he gasped, more white and shaken than the self-contained, sensible Mycroft had been for many years.

 

Sherlock himself answered, lifting his head.

 

“Don’t be very frightened, Mycroft. I was walking the ridgepole and I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Mycroft, I might have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.”

 

“I might have known you’d go and do something of the sort when I let you go to that party,” said Mycroft, sharp in his very relief. “Bring her in here, Mr. Hooper, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy — the child has gone and fainted!”

 

It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of his injury, Sherlock had one more of his wishes granted to him. He had fainted dead away.

 

Greg, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the injury was more serious than they had supposed. 

 

Sherlock’s ankle was broken.

 

That night, when Mycroft went up to the east gable, where a white-faced boy was lying, a plaintive voice greeted him from the bed.

 

“Aren’t you very sorry for me, Mycroft?”

 

“It was your own fault,” said Mycroft, twitching down the blind and lighting a lamp.

 

“And that is just why you should be sorry for me,” said Sherlock, “because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I could blame it on anybody else, I would feel so much better. But what would you have done, Mycroft, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?”

 

“I’d have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such absurdity!” said Mycroft.

 

Sherlock sighed.

 

“But you have such strength of mind, Mycroft. I haven’t. I just felt that I couldn’t bear Jim Moriarty’s scorn. He would have crowed over me all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you needn’t be very cross with me. It’s not a bit nice to faint, after all. And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. 

 

“I won’t be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I’ll miss the new teacher who’ll be replacing Mr. Anderson. She won’t be new any more by the time I’m able to go to school. And John — everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted mortal. But I’ll try to bear it all bravely if only you won’t be cross with me, Mycroft.”

 

“There, there, I’m not cross,” said Mycroft. “You’re an unlucky child, there’s no doubt about that; but as you say, you’ll have the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.”

 

“Isn’t it fortunate I’ve got such an imagination?” said Sherlock. “It will help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who haven’t any imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Mycroft?”

 

Sherlock had good reason to bless his imagination many a time and oft during the tedious seven weeks that followed. But he was not solely dependent on it. He had many visitors, and not a day passed without one or more of his classmates dropping in to bring him flowers and books and tell him all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.

 

“Everybody has been so good and kind, Mycroft,” sighed Sherlock happily, on the day when he could first limp across the floor. “It isn’t very pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it. You find out how many friends you have. 

 

“The minister’s wife has been to see me fourteen times. Isn’t that something to be proud of, Mycroft? When a minister’s wife has so many claims on her time! She is such a cheerful person to have visit you, too. She never tells you it’s your own fault and she hopes you’ll be a better girl on account of it. Mrs. Donovan always told me that when she came to see me; and she said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might _hope_ I’d be a better girl but didn’t really believe I would. 

 

“Even Jim Moriarty came to see me. I received him as politely as I could, because I think he was sorry he dared me to walk a ridgepole. If I had been killed he would have had to carry a dark burden of remorse all his life. 

 

“Molly has been a faithful friend. She’s been over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. And John Watson tried to visit, but I wouldn’t speak to him then, and I shan’t speak of him now.

 

“Oh, I shall be so glad when I can go to school, for I’ve heard such exciting things about the new teacher. The girls all think she is perfectly sweet. Molly says she’s young and pretty, and dresses beautifully, and her sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else’s in Avonlea. Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue. And the Friday afternoons they don’t have recitations Miss Hudson takes them all to the woods for a ‘field’ day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Donovan says she never heard of such goings on and it all comes of having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I believe I shall find that Miss Hudson is a kindred spirit.”

 

“There’s one thing plain to be seen, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, “and that is that your fall off the Hoopers’ roof hasn’t injured your tongue at all.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, my goodness! Is there any sort of predicament Sherlock hasn't yet got into? Find out what fresh trouble he'll stir up next week, when there is A New Departure in Flavorings.
> 
> Meanwhile, you might enjoy my latest parentlock 221B ficlet - [A Surprise Birthday Gift](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16481963).


	20. A New Departure in Flavorings

“Although you can’t walk well enough to go back to school yet, I suppose we must have the new teacher up to tea someday soon,” said Mycroft reflectively. “She’s been almost everywhere but here. Let me see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have her. But don’t say a word to Greg about it, for if he knew she was coming he’d find some excuse to be away that day. He’s going to worry that a lady school teacher will want to marry him.”

 

“I’ll be as secret as the dead,” assured Sherlock. “But oh, Mycroft, will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I’d love to do something for Miss Hudson, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this time.”

 

“You can make a layer cake,” promised Mycroft.

 

On Monday and Tuesday, great preparations went on at Green Gables. Having the new school teacher to tea was a serious and important undertaking, and Mycroft was determined not to be eclipsed by any of the other folk of Avonlea. 

 

Sherlock was wild with excitement and delight. He talked it all over with Molly Tuesday night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones by the Dryad’s Bubble and made rainbows in the water with little twigs dipped in fir balsam.

 

“Everything is ready, Molly, except my cake which I’m to make in the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Mycroft will make just before teatime. I assure you, Molly, that Mycroft and I have had a busy two days of it. It’s such a responsibility having a teacher to tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just see our pantry. It’s a sight to behold. We’re going to have jellied chicken and cold tongue. We’re to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and whipped cream, and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies, and fruit cake, and Mycroft’s famous yellow plum preserves that he keeps especially for company, and pound cake and layer cake. I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Molly, what if it shouldn’t be good! I dreamed last night that I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head.”

 

“It’ll be good, all right,” assured Molly, who was a very comfortable sort of friend. “I’m sure that piece of the one you made that we had for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant.”

 

“Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good,” sighed Sherlock, setting a particularly well-balsamed twig afloat. “However, I suppose I shall just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour.”

 

Wednesday morning came. Sherlock got up at sunrise because he was too excited to sleep. He had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of his dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched his interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast he proceeded to make his cake. When he finally shut the oven door upon it he drew a long breath.

 

“I’m sure I haven’t forgotten anything this time, Mycroft. But do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn’t good? I used it out of the new can. And Miss Donovan says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated. Miss Donovan says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says we’ll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it. Mycroft, what if that cake doesn’t rise?”

 

“We’ll have plenty without it,” was Mycroft’s unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.

 

The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam. Sherlock, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Miss Hudson eating it and possibly asking for another piece!

 

“You’ll be using the best tea set, of course, Mycroft,” he said. “Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?”

 

“I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Mycroft. “In my opinion it’s the food that matters and not foolish decorations.”

 

“Mrs. Hooper had _her_ table decorated,” said Sherlock, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and Miss Hudson paid her an elegant compliment. She said it was a feast for the eye as well as the palate.”

 

“Well, do as you like,” said Mycroft, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Hooper or anybody else. “Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food.”

 

Sherlock laid himself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should leave Mrs. Hooper’s nowhere. Having an abundance of roses and ferns and a very artistic taste of his own, he made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when Miss Hudson at last sat down to it she exclaimed over its loveliness.

 

“It’s Sherlock’s doing,” said Mycroft, grimly just; and Sherlock felt that Miss Hudson’s approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world.

 

Greg was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness and Sherlock knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Mycroft had given him up in despair, but Sherlock took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar. He never said a word to Miss Hudson, but that perhaps was not to be expected.

 

All went merry as a marriage bell until Sherlock’s layer cake was passed. Miss Hudson, having already been helped to a bewildering variety, declined it. But Mycroft, seeing the disappointment on Sherlock’s face, said smilingly:

 

“Oh, you must take a piece of this, Miss Hudson. Sherlock made it on purpose for you.”

 

“In that case I must sample it,” laughed Miss Hudson, helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also Greg and Mycroft.

 

Miss Hudson took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away at it. Mycroft saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.

 

“Sherlock Scott!” he exclaimed, “what on earth did you put into that cake?”

 

“Nothing but what the recipe said, Mycroft,” cried Sherlock with a look of anguish. “Oh, isn’t it all right?”

 

“All right! It’s simply horrible. Miss Hudson, don’t try to eat it. Sherlock, taste it yourself. What flavouring did you use?”

 

“Vanilla,” said Sherlock, his face scarlet with mortification after tasting the cake. “Only vanilla. Oh, Mycroft, it must have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak—”

 

“Baking powder? Nonsense! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you used.”

 

Sherlock fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, “Best Vanilla.”

 

Mycroft took it, uncorked it, smelled it.

 

“Mercy on us, Sherlock, you’ve flavoured that cake with _Anodyne Liniment_. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it’s partly my fault—I should have warned you—but for pity’s sake why couldn’t you have smelled it?”

 

Sherlock dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.

 

“I couldn’t — I had such a cold!” and with this he fled as fast as he could hobble to the gable chamber, where he cast himself on the bed and wept as one who refuses to be comforted.

 

Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the room.

 

“Oh, Mycroft,” sobbed Sherlock, without looking up, “I’m disgraced forever. I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out — things always do get out in Avonlea. Molly will ask me how my cake turned out and I shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the fool who flavoured a cake with anodyne liniment. John— the boys in school will never get over laughing at it. 

 

“Oh, Mycroft, if you have a spark of pity don’t tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes after this. I’ll wash them when Miss Hudson is gone, but I cannot ever look her in the face again. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to return to school. Perhaps Miss Hudson will think I tried to poison her. Miss Donovan says she knows an orphan girl who tried to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn’t poisonous. It’s meant to be taken internally — although not in cakes. Won’t you tell Miss Hudson so, Mycroft?”

 

“Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,” said a merry voice.

 

Sherlock flew up, to find Miss Hudson standing by his bed, surveying him with laughing eyes.

 

“My dear little girl, you mustn’t cry like this,” she said, genuinely disturbed by Sherlock’s tragic face. “Why, it’s all just a funny mistake that anybody might make.”

 

“Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,” said Sherlock forlornly. “And I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Miss Hudson.”

 

“Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now, you mustn’t cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower garden. Mr. Holmes tells me you have a little plot all your own. I want to see it, for I’m very much interested in flowers.”

 

Sherlock permitted himself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it was really providential that Miss Hudson was a kindred spirit. Nothing more was said about the liniment cake, and when their guest went away Sherlock found that he had enjoyed the evening more than could have been expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, he sighed deeply.

 

“Mycroft, isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

 

“I’ll warrant you’ll make plenty in it,” said Mycroft. “I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Sherlock.”

 

“Yes, and well I know it,” admitted Sherlock mournfully. “But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Mycroft? I never make the same mistake twice.”

 

“I don’t know as that’s much benefit when you’re always making new ones.”

 

“Oh, don’t you see, Mycroft? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I’ll be through with them. That’s a very comforting thought.”

 

“Well, you’d better go and give that cake to the pigs,” said Mycroft. “It isn’t fit for any human to eat.”

 

“I kind of liked it,” said Greg, and they all laughed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What will happen once Sherlock's ankle is healed enough for him to return to school? Find out next week, when Miss Hudson and Her Pupils Put On a Performance.


	21. Miss Hudson and Her Pupils Put On a Performance

It was October again when Sherlock was ready to go back to school; and it was jolly to be back again at the little brown desk beside Molly, with Irene Adler nodding across the aisle and Janine Hawkins sending up notes and Mike Stamford passing a “chew” of gum down from the back seat. Sherlock drew a long breath of happiness as he sharpened his pencil and arranged his picture cards in his desk. Life was certainly very interesting.

 

In the new teacher Sherlock found a true and helpful friend. Miss Hudson was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally. Sherlock expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Greg and the critical Mycroft glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.

 

“I love Miss Hudson with my whole heart,” Sherlock gushed. “She has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel _instinctively_ that she cares about me. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite ‘Mary, Queen of Scots.’ I just put my whole soul into it. Irene Adler told me coming home that the way I said the line, _‘Now for my father’s arm,’ she said, ‘my woman’s heart farewell,’_ just made her blood run cold.”

 

“Well now, you might recite it for me one of these days, out in the barn,” suggested Greg.

 

“Of course I will,” said Sherlock meditatively, “but I won’t be able to do it so well, I know. It won’t be so exciting as it is when you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your words. I know I won’t be able to make your blood run cold.”

 

“Sally Donovan says it made _her_ blood run cold to see the boys climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Bell’s hill after crows’ nests last Friday,” said Mycroft. “I wonder at Miss Hudson for encouraging it.”

 

“But we wanted a crow’s nest for nature study,” explained Sherlock. “That was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid! And Miss Hudson explains everything so beautifully. We have to write compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.”

 

“It’s very vain of you to say so. You had better let your teacher say it.”

 

“But she _did_ say it, Mycroft. And indeed, I’m not vain about it. How can I be, when I’m such a dunce at astronomy? Although I’m really beginning to remember it a little, too. Miss Hudson makes it so clear. Still, I’ll never be as good at it as John, and I assure you it is a humbling reflection. 

 

“I’m top of the class in chemistry, though. Ever since my mishap with the cake — which Miss Hudson has been kind enough never to mention — I’ve been fascinated by chemical reactions. Miss Hudson explained how baking powder contains both an acid and a base, so when you add liquid it creates a chemical reaction that forms carbon dioxide bubbles, which is why the cake rises. And flavours are based on the various chemicals that our taste buds perceive. Isn’t that fascinating?

 

“There’s so much to learn at school. And I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Hudson lets us choose our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable person. It’s hard to choose among so many remarkable people who have lived. Mustn’t it be splendid to be remarkable and have compositions written about you after you’re dead? 

 

“Oh, I would dearly love to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I’ll be a chemist, and perform brilliant experiments — or maybe I’ll be a detective, and solve the most baffling crimes. That would be very remarkable, wouldn’t it? 

 

“We have physical culture exercises every day, too. Miss Hudson says they make you graceful and promote digestion.”

 

“Ridiculous!” said Mycroft, who honestly thought it was all nonsense.

 

But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture contortions paled before a project which Miss Hudson brought forward in November. This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should put on a performance and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable purpose of helping to pay for a schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and all taking graciously to this plan, the preparations for a program were begun at once. 

 

Of all the excited performers-elect none was so excited as Sherlock Scott, who threw himself into the undertaking heart and soul, encouraged by Greg, but hampered by Mycroft’s disapproval. Mycroft thought it all rank foolishness.

 

“It’s just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that ought to be put on your lessons,” Mycroft grumbled. “I don’t approve of children’s putting on performances and racing about to practices. It makes them vain and forward and fond of gadding.”

 

“But think of the worthy object,” pleaded Sherlock. “A flag will cultivate a spirit of patriotism, Mycroft.”

 

“There’s precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of you. All you want is a good time.”

 

“Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn’t it all right? Of course it’s exciting to be putting on a performance. We’re going to have six choruses and Molly is to sing a solo. I’m in two dialogues — ‘The Society for the Suppression of Gossip’ and ‘The Fairy Queen.’ And I’m to have two recitations, Mycroft. I just tremble when I think of it, but it’s a nice thrilling kind of tremble. 

 

“And we’re to have a tableau at the last — ‘Faith, Hope and Charity.’ Molly and Irene and I are to be in it, all draped in white with flowing hair. I’m to be Hope, with my hands clasped — so — and my eyes uplifted. I’m going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don’t be alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one of them, and it’s really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Mycroft. 

 

“We are going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by two after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the organ. Oh, Mycroft, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am, but don’t you hope your little Sherlock will distinguish himself?”

 

“All I hope is that you’ll behave yourself. I’ll be heartily glad when all this fuss is over and you’ll be able to settle down. You are simply good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and groans and tableaus. As for your tongue, it’s a marvel it’s not completely worn out.”

 

Sherlock sighed and betook himself to the back yard, where Greg was splitting wood. Sherlock perched himself on a block and talked the performance over with him, sure of an appreciative and sympathetic listener in this instance at least.

 

“It sounds like it’s going to be a very good show. And I’m sure you’ll do your part fine,” Greg said, smiling down into his eager face. 

 

Sherlock smiled back at him. Those two were the best of friends, and Greg thanked his stars many a time and oft that he wasn’t in charge of bringing Sherlock up. That was Mycroft’s duty; if it had been Greg’s he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to “spoil Sherlock” — Mycroft’s phrasing — as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little “appreciation” sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious “bringing up” in the world.

 

…

 

All the Avonlea scholars were in an even bigger fever of excitement that Christmas than usual, for once their gifts had been opened and church services attended, the hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.

 

The performance that evening was a pronounced success. The little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but Sherlock was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in the shape of Jim Moriarty, dared not deny.

 

“Oh, hasn’t it been a brilliant evening?” sighed Sherlock, when it was all over and he and Molly were walking home together under a dark, starry sky.

 

“Everything went off very well,” said Molly practically. “I guess we must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Miss Hudson is going to send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.”

 

“Oh, Molly, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Molly. I felt prouder than you did when it was encored. I just said to myself, ‘It is my dear bosom friend who is so honoured.’”

 

“Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Sherlock. That sad one was simply splendid.”

 

“Oh, I was so nervous, Molly. When Miss Hudson called out my name I really cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I was sure I couldn’t begin at all. It’s providential that I practiced those recitations so often up in the garret, or I’d never have been able to get through. Did I groan all right?”

 

“Yes, indeed, you groaned in a most lovely way,” assured Molly.

 

“I saw old Mrs. Stamford wiping away tears when I sat down. It was splendid to think I had touched somebody’s heart. It’s so romantic to take part in a performance, isn’t it? Oh, it’s been a very memorable occasion indeed.”

 

“Wasn’t the boys’ dialogue fine?” said Molly. “John Watson was just splendid. Sherlock, I do think it’s awfully mean the way you treat John. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw John pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now. You’re so romantic that I’m sure you ought to be pleased at that.”

 

“It’s nothing to me what that person does,” said Sherlock loftily. “I simply never waste a thought on him, Molly.”

 

That night, Mycroft and Greg, who had been out to a children’s performance together for the first time in their twenty years as a couple, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after Sherlock had gone to bed.

 

“Well now, I guess our Sherlock did as well as any of them,” said Greg proudly.

 

“Yes, he did,” admitted Mycroft. “He’s a bright child, Greg. I know I said, at first, I was opposed to him being part of this performance, but I suppose there’s no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I was proud of Sherlock tonight, although I’m not going to tell him so.”

 

“Well now, I was proud of him and I _did_ tell him so, before he went upstairs,” said Greg. “We must see what we can do for him, Mycroft. I guess he’ll need something more than Avonlea school by and by.”

 

“There’s time enough to think of that,” said Mycroft. “He’ll only be thirteen next month; though tonight it struck me he’s growing quite tall. He’s quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do for him will be to send him to Queen’s College after a spell. But nothing need be said about that for a year or two yet.”

 

“Well, it’ll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,” said Greg. “Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe that Sherlock is almost 13 already? Do you suppose his days of childhood calamities are over? Find out next week, when he experiences Vanity and Vexation of Spirit.


	22. Vanity and Vexation of Spirit

Mycroft, walking home one late April evening from an Aid Society meeting, realised that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest. Mycroft was not given to subjective analysis of his feelings. He probably imagined that he was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious consciousness of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the grey sod. Spring was abroad in the land, and Mycroft’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.

 

As he picked his steps along the damp lane, Mycroft thought that it was really a satisfaction to know that he was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table nicely spread for tea, instead of having to take care of such things himself, as he had before Sherlock had come to Green Gables. Consequently, when he entered the kitchen and found the fire black out, with no sign of Sherlock anywhere, he felt justly disappointed and irritated. He had told Sherlock to be sure and have tea ready at five o’clock, but now he must hurry to prepare the meal himself before Greg returned from ploughing.

 

“I’ll settle Sherlock when he comes home,” said Mycroft grimly, as he shaved up kindling with a carving knife with more vim than was strictly necessary. 

 

Greg had come in and was waiting patiently for his tea. 

 

“He’s gadding off somewhere with Molly, practicing dialogues or conducting experiments or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or his duties,” muttered Mycroft. “I don’t care if Miss Hudson does say he’s the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. He may be bright and sweet enough, but his head is full of nonsense and there’s never any knowing what shape it’ll break out in next. Just as soon as he grows out of one freak he takes up with another.

 

“But there! Here I am saying the very thing I was so riled with Sally Donovan for saying at the Aid Society meeting today. I was glad when Miss Hudson spoke up for Sherlock, for if she hadn’t I know I’d have said something too sharp to Sally before everybody. Sherlock’s got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it from me to deny it. But I’m bringing him up and not Sally Donovan, who’d pick faults with the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. 

 

“Just the same, Sherlock has no business to leave the house like this when I told him he was to stay home this afternoon and look after things. I must say, with all his faults, I never found him disobedient or untrustworthy before and I’m very sorry to find him so now.”

 

“Well,” said Greg, who, being patient and wise and, above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Mycroft talk his wrath out unhindered, having learned by experience that he got through with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely argument. “Perhaps you’re judging him too hastily, Mycroft. Don’t call him untrustworthy until you’re sure he has disobeyed you. Maybe it can all be explained — Sherlock’s a great hand at explaining.”

 

“He’s not here when I told him to stay,” retorted Mycroft. “He’ll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course, I knew you’d take his part, Greg. But remember, I’m in charge of bringing him up, not you.”

 

It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Sherlock, coming hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lover’s Lane, breathless and repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Mycroft washed and put away the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light his way down the cellar, he went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood on Sherlock’s table. Lighting it, he turned around to see Sherlock himself lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.

 

“Mercy on us,” said astonished Mycroft, “have you been asleep, Sherlock?”

 

“No,” was the muffled reply.

 

“Are you sick then?” demanded Mycroft anxiously, going over to the bed.

 

Sherlock cowered deeper into his pillows, as if desirous of hiding himself forever from mortal eyes.

 

“No. But please, Mycroft, go away and don’t look at me. I’m in the depths of despair and I don’t care who gets head in class or writes the best composition or sings in the Sunday School choir any more. Little things like that are of no importance now because I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please, Mycroft, go away and don’t look at me.”

 

“Did anyone ever hear the like?” the mystified Mycroft wanted to know. “Sherlock Scott, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is it?”

 

Sherlock had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.

 

“Look at my hair, Mycroft,” he whispered.

 

Accordingly, Mycroft lifted his candle and scrutinized Sherlock’s hair, flowing in long curls down his back. It certainly had a very strange appearance.

 

“Sherlock Scott, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s _green!_ ”

 

Green it might be called, if it were any earthly colour — a queer, dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original colour to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all his life had Mycroft seen anything so grotesque as Sherlock’s hair at that moment.

 

“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Sherlock. “I thought nothing could be as bad as my curly hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have curly _green_ hair. Oh, Mycroft, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”

 

“I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,” said Mycroft. “Come right down to the kitchen — it’s too cold up here — and tell me just what you’ve done. I’ve been expecting something queer for some time. You haven’t got into any scrapes for over two months, and I was sure another one was due.”

 

Sherlock meekly followed Mycroft downstairs. As he entered the kitchen, Greg gasped in surprise at the sight of him.

 

“Sherlock, what’s happened to your hair?”

 

“I tried to straighten it.”

 

“Straighten your hair!” snapped Mycroft. “Sherlock Scott, didn’t you know it was a foolish thing to do?”

 

“Yes, I knew it was a little foolish,” admitted Sherlock. “But I thought it was worth while to be a little foolish to get rid of curly hair. I counted the cost, Mycroft. Besides, I meant to be extra smart in other ways to make up for it.”

 

“Well,” said Mycroft sarcastically, “if I’d decided it was worth while to alter my natural hair, I wouldn’t have dyed it green.”

 

“But I didn’t mean to dye it green,” protested Sherlock dejectedly. “If I was foolish, I meant to be foolish to some purpose. He said it would make my hair as straight as an arrow — he positively assured me that it would. How could I doubt his word? I know what it feels like to have your word doubted. And the minister’s wife says we should never suspect anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they’re not. I have proof now — curly green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I hadn’t then and I believed every word he said _implicitly_.”

 

“Who said?” asked Greg. “Who are you talking about?”

 

“The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the straightening solution from him.”

 

“Sherlock Scott, how often have I told you never to let one of those peddlers in the house!” demanded Mycroft. “I don’t believe in encouraging them to come around at all.”

 

“Oh, I didn’t let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and I went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step. He had a big box full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy something from him to help him in such a worthy object.”

 

Sherlock looked at Greg, who nodded at him in understanding. Mycroft’s expression, however, was grim. He motioned for Sherlock to continue.

 

“Well, I spotted the bottle of hair straightener. The peddler said it was warranted to straighten any hair and wouldn’t wash off. In a trice I saw myself with beautiful straight tresses, and the temptation was irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the peddler had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he’d sell it for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. 

 

“So I bought it, and as soon as he had gone I applied it with an old hairbrush as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, when I saw the dreadful colour it turned my hair — which as you can see is just as curly as ever — I repented of being foolish, I can tell you. And I’ve been repenting ever since.”

 

“Well, I hope you’ll repent to good purpose,” said Mycroft severely, “and that you’ve got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you, Sherlock. Goodness knows what’s to be done. I suppose the first thing is to give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.”

 

Accordingly, Sherlock washed his hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and water, but for all the difference it made he might as well have been trying to scour the green off the grass in the meadow. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth when he declared that the solution wouldn’t wash off, however his veracity might be impeached in other respects.

 

“Oh, Greg, what shall I do?” questioned Sherlock in tears. “I can never live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes — the liniment cake and setting Molly drunk and flying into a temper with Mrs. Donovan. But they’ll never forget this. I can’t go to school like this! Oh, how John Watson will laugh! I _cannot_ face John Watson. The very first day we met, he called me Poodle because of my curly hair. If he sees me like this, I’m sure he’ll call me Broccoli! I am the unhappiest child in Prince Edward Island.”

 

“Well, now,” said Greg, trying to suppress a grin, “perhaps it will fade with time, or a few more washings.”

 

Sherlock’s unhappiness continued for a week. During that time he went nowhere and shampooed his hair every day. Molly alone of outsiders knew the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may be stated here and now that she kept her word. 

 

At the end of the week Mycroft said decidedly: “It’s no use, Sherlock. That is fast dye if ever there was any.”

 

“But what shall I do?” cried Sherlock. “I can’t go out with it looking like this!”

 

“Perhaps we should cut it off,” suggested Greg. “The green doesn’t quite go down to the roots.”

 

“Don’t you think he’ll look too much like a boy, with his hair cut short?” asked Mycroft.

 

“I’ll go into Carmody this afternoon and buy him the prettiest bonnet I can find, so no one will have to see it.”

 

“Oh, will you?” asked Sherlock, clapping his hands. “A beautiful new bonnet would almost make up for everything.”

 

“I don’t think it’s right for you to be rewarded with finery for your foolish ways, Sherlock,” said Mycroft sternly. “However, we can’t afford to have people wondering why you don’t look like a proper girl, so I suppose I’ll allow Greg to indulge you in this instance.” 

 

“Thank you, Mycroft. Now, please cut my hair off at once, and have it over. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I’m sure I wouldn’t mind losing my hair in some such fashion half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because you’ve dyed it a dreadful colour, is there?”

 

Mycroft did his work thoroughly. It was necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible. The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Sherlock promptly turned his mirror to the wall.

 

“I’ll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,” he exclaimed passionately.

 

Then he suddenly righted the glass.

 

“Yes, I will, too. I’d do penance for being foolish that way. I never thought I was vain about my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being curly, because it was a becoming colour.”

 

Sherlock’s clipped head made a sensation in school on the following day, but to his relief nobody guessed the real reason for it. No one would even have known about it, had not Jim Moriarty snatched off his bonnet, burst out laughing, and informed the entire class that Sherlock looked like a perfect scarecrow — and everyone should stay away, or risk catching the lice that must have required her hair to be cut so short.

 

“I didn’t say anything when Jim said that,” Sherlock confided that evening to Greg, “because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought to bear it patiently. It’s hard to be told you look like a scarecrow and I wanted to say something back. But I didn’t. I just retied my bonnet, swept him one scornful look, and then I forgave him. It makes you feel very virtuous when you forgive people, doesn’t it?”

 

“I suppose it does,” said Greg. “And what about John Watson? Have you forgiven him yet for calling you Poodle so long ago? Or did he say something new to offend you when he saw your hair today?”

 

“No…” said Sherlock hesitatingly. “He didn’t say anything about my hair, and he didn’t laugh, either. But still, I don’t know if I can ever forgive him. After all, he’s been my archenemy since the day we met. If we weren’t enemies, I don’t know what we’d be.”  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock may have no idea what he and John would be if they weren't enemies, but I'll bet you do...


	23. An Unfortunate Lily Maid

Over a year went by before Sherlock’s hair grew long enough for him to look like a proper girl once more. It didn’t affect anything other than his vanity, though. Of course no one in Avonlea ever suspected him of being a boy. How would such an idea have entered anyone’s head? For a boy to go about wearing girls’ clothes was unheard of and unimaginable; therefore, the good folks of Avonlea did not imagine it. Any lack of femininity in Sherlock’s behaviour was put down to being raised by a couple of bachelors. As for his looks, well, if he kept on growing taller without growing any curvier, he must simply be a late bloomer. 

 

Though Sherlock might be short on curves, he was never short on imagination — or trouble. He did his best to share the former with his friends, often unintentionally sharing the latter in the process. 

 

…

 

“Of course you must be Elaine, Sherlock,” said Molly. “I could never have the courage to float down there.”

 

“Nor I,” said Janine Hawkins, with a shiver. “I don’t mind floating down when there’s two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It’s fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead — I just couldn’t. I’d die really of fright.”

 

“Of course it would be romantic,” conceded Irene Adler, “but I know I couldn’t keep still. I’d be popping up every minute or so to see where I was and if I wasn’t drifting too far out. And you know, Sherlock, that would spoil the effect.”

 

“But it’s so ridiculous to have a curly-haired Elaine,” mourned Sherlock. “I’m not afraid to float down and I’d love to be Elaine. But it’s ridiculous just the same. Molly ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has such lovely long straight golden hair — Elaine had _‘all her bright hair streaming down,’_ you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, I cannot be a lily maid.”

 

“Your complexion is just as fair as mine,” said Molly earnestly, “and your curls are really quite becoming now that they’ve grown back.”

 

“Oh, do you really think so?” exclaimed Sherlock, flushing sensitively with delight. “I’ve sometimes thought my hair was getting more manageable, myself — but I never dared to ask anyone for fear they would tell me it wasn’t. Do you think it’s less unruly now, Molly?”

 

“Yes, and I think it is very pretty,” said Molly, looking admiringly at the silky curls that clustered over Sherlock’s head and were held in place by a very jaunty blue velvet ribbon and bow.

 

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Irene and Janine were spending the midsummer afternoon with Molly, and Sherlock had come over to play with them.

 

Sherlock and Molly had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Hooper having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring. Sherlock had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it; but he was speedily consoled, for, after all, as he and Molly said, big girls of fourteen, going on fifteen, were too old for such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge, and they learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Hooper kept for duck shooting.

 

It was Sherlock’s idea that they dramatise Elaine. They had studied Tennyson’s poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward Island schools. They had analysed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Sherlock was devoured by secret regret that he had not been born in Camelot. Those days, he said, were so much more romantic than the present.

 

Sherlock’s plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if the flat boat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine.

 

“Well, I suppose I could be Elaine,” said Sherlock, yielding reluctantly, for, although he would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet his artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, he felt, his limitations made impossible. “But I cannot wear this blue dress. Tennyson was very specific on the point of Elaine’s clothing: _she herself in white_.”

 

“Your slip is white, isn’t it?” asked Molly.

 

“Yes,” said Sherlock. “It’s not very fancy, but I suppose it will have to do.”

 

He took off the blue dress and folded it neatly before placing it on the ground.

 

“Irene, you must be King Arthur and Janine will be Guinevere and Molly must be Lancelot,” Sherlock directed. “But first you must be the brothers and the father. We can’t have the old dumb servitor because there isn’t room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother’s will be just the thing, Molly.”

 

The black shawl having been procured, Sherlock spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over his chest.

 

“Oh, she does look really dead,” whispered Janine Hawkins nervously, watching the still, white face under the flickering shadows of the birches. “It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it’s really right to act like this? Mrs. Donovan says that all play-acting is abominably wicked.”

 

“Janine, you shouldn’t talk about Mrs. Donovan,” said Sherlock severely. “It spoils the effect, because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Donovan was born. Irene, you arrange this. It’s silly for Elaine to be talking when she’s dead.”

 

Irene rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Sherlock’s folded hands was all that could be desired.

 

“Now, she’s all ready,” said Irene. “We must kiss her quiet brows and, Molly, you say, ‘Sister, farewell forever,’ and Janine, you say, ‘Farewell, sweet sister,’ both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can. Sherlock, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine _‘lay as though she smiled.’_ That’s better. Now push the flat off.”

 

The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process. Molly and Janine and Irene only waited long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive the lily maid.

 

For a few minutes, Sherlock, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of his situation to the fullest. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for the ersatz Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. 

 

That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Sherlock did not know this, but it did not take him long to realise that he was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left behind at the landing!

 

Sherlock gave one gasping little scream, which nobody ever heard. He had never learned to swim, and quickly deduced that he would not enjoy drowning. He was white to the lips, but he did not lose his self-possession. There was one chance — just one.

 

“I was horribly frightened,” he told Greg and Mycroft later, “and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed most earnestly, but I didn’t shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. 

 

“It was proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, ‘Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I’ll do the rest,’ over and over again. Under such circumstances you don’t think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential stub. 

 

“And there I was clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn’t think about that at the time. You don’t think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back to dry land.”

 

The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Irene, Janine, and Molly, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Sherlock had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Sherlock, clinging desperately to his precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile his position was a very uncomfortable one.

 

The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. Why didn’t somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose he grew so tired and cramped that he could hold on no longer! Sherlock looked at the wicked green depths below him, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. His imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to him.

 

Then, just as he thought he really could not endure the ache in his arms and wrists another moment, John Watson came rowing under the bridge in a dory!

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could things possibly get any worse? I’m afraid they could for you, dear readers. This story will be on a brief hiatus until after the holidays, so you’ll have to wait until next month to find out what happens when Sherlock’s Secret Comes Out!
> 
> I apologize (with a mixture of sincerity and wicked laughter) for leaving you with this cliffhanger. If you haven’t yet subscribed, now would be a good time to do so. That way, you’ll be notified the instant our regular programing resumes. :)
> 
> Meanwhile, may I suggest some holiday fluff to take your mind off of Sherlock's dreadful plight? I have two new offerings — [The Elves and the Brew-Maker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787260) and [Talking in a Winter Wonderland](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16796830) — as well as a series of (twisted) classic [Johnlock Comes A-Wassailing](https://archiveofourown.org/series/591307) songs for your seasonal pleasure.


	24. Sherlock's Secret Comes Out

John Watson, rowing under the bridge, glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful blue-grey-green eyes.

 

“Sherlock Scott! How on earth did you get there?” he exclaimed.

 

Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. 

 

There was no help for it; Sherlock, clinging to John Watson’s hand, scrambled down into the dory, where he sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern, with his arms full of dripping shawl and wet scarf. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!

 

“What has happened, Sherlock?” asked John, taking up his oars. 

 

“We were playing Elaine,” explained Sherlock frigidly, without even looking at his rescuer, “and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge — I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?”

 

John obligingly rowed to the landing and Sherlock, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly onto shore.

 

“I’m very much obliged to you,” he said haughtily as he turned away. But John had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on his arm, prompting him to turn back around.

 

“Sherlock,” he said hurriedly, “look here. Can’t we be good friends? I’m truly sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn’t mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it’s so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now — honestly I do. Let’s be friends.”

 

For a moment Sherlock hesitated. He had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all his outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in John’s eyes was something that was very good to see. His heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But before he could respond, the expression in John’s eyes changed to one of shock.

 

Following John’s gaze, Sherlock looked down his own body to realise, with horror, that his wet slip had become completely translucent. While he was sitting in the boat his lap had been covered by Mrs. Hooper’s shawl and scarf, but now the sheer white fabric clung to him, leaving nothing to the imagination.

 

Sherlock quickly wrapped the black shawl around his waist as a skirt and draped the yellow scarf over his shoulders to hide his chest. One glance at John, though, showed that he was too late. His secret was out.

 

Sherlock’s mind whirred faster than it had in all his life. What could he do? He had to protect Mycroft and Greg at all costs. If word got around that they’d been knowingly dressing him as a girl for the past three years, they’d be forced to leave Avonlea — or maybe Prince Edward Island altogether. First and foremost, Sherlock had to convince John of their ignorance.

 

Determined on his course of action, Sherlock clasped John’s hands, gazed pleadingly into his eyes, and, using every ounce of his acting ability, begged, “Please, please don’t tell Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lestrade what you’ve seen! I’ve managed to keep my secret from them all this time, and if they found out, they’d send me straight back to the orphan asylum. You can’t begin to imagine how horrible it was there, and I would do anything — even trick my benefactors and my nearest and dearest friends into thinking I’m a girl — just to escape.”  

 

Who could resist such a heartfelt plea? Certainly not John Watson, whose shock at his discovery was rapidly being supplanted by delight in the fact that he finally had Sherlock’s undivided attention. He squeezed the trembling hands clasping his own and replied:

 

“Of course I won’t tell. I promise I’ll never breathe a word of this to a living soul.”

 

“Oh, thank you!” Sherlock cried, weak with relief. “Thank you! Now, I must go and find my friends, so they don’t worry.”

 

John held onto Sherlock’s hands a moment longer. “I do hope you’ll count _me_ as one of your friends, from now on,” he said earnestly. Then, without waiting for Sherlock to reply, he hopped back into the dory and rowed away.

 

Altogether, Sherlock rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. He was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from his fright and cramped clinging — not to mention having his secret discovered by John Watson, of all people — was making itself felt. He began making his weary way home.

 

Halfway up the path he met Irene and Molly rushing back to the pond in a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Hooper being away. Here Janine had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Irene and Molly flew through the woods and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Mycroft had gone to Carmody and Greg was making hay in the back field.

 

“Oh, Sherlock,” gasped Molly, fairly falling on the former’s neck and weeping with relief and delight, “oh, Sherlock — we thought — you were — drowned — and we felt like murderers — because we had made — you be — Elaine. And Janine is in hysterics — oh, Sherlock, how did you escape?”

 

“I climbed up on one of the piles,” explained Sherlock wearily, “and John Watson came along in his dory and brought me to land.”

 

“Oh, Sherlock, how splendid of him! Why, it’s so romantic!” said Irene, finding breath enough for utterance at last. “You know he’s dead gone on you.”

 

“I don’t want ever to hear the word ‘romantic’ again!” flashed Sherlock, with a momentary return of his old spirit. “Of course, I’ll have to be friends with him after this, but that is all. 

 

“I’m awfully sorry you were so frightened. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We’ve gone and lost your father’s flat, Molly, and I have a presentiment that we’ll not be allowed to row on the pond any more.”

 

Sherlock’s presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Hooper and Holmes-Lestrade households when the events of the afternoon became known.

 

“Will you ever have any sense, Sherlock?” groaned Mycroft.

 

“Oh, yes, I think I will, Mycroft,” returned Sherlock optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed his nerves and restored him to his wonted cheerfulness. “I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.”

 

“I don’t see how,” said Mycroft.

 

“Well,” explained Sherlock, “I’ve learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I’ve been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn’t belong to me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. And today’s mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me in this respect, Mycroft.”

 

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Mycroft skeptically.

 

But Greg, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Sherlock’s shoulder when Mycroft had gone out.

 

“Don’t give up all your romance, Sherlock,” he whispered. “A little of it is a good thing — not too much, of course — but keep a little of it, Sherlock, keep a little of it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dearest Readers,
> 
> It is with great sorrow that I am putting this story on indefinite hiatus. 
> 
> Why? Well, several months ago I received a couple of negative comments. Nothing horrible or nasty — just mild criticism. I told myself not to take it too hard. After all, there are 266 separate comment threads on this fic (586 comments, if you include replies) and 99% of them are positive. At a time when many writers are bemoaning a lack of feedback, I am blessed with the most wonderful, generous, effusive readers imaginable. I am so deeply thankful for all of you. And yet…
> 
> And yet, I’ve found myself unable to continue writing. I’ve been posting chapters I’d already written, and hoping that I would rediscover my inspiration. However, instead of finding my muse over the holiday break, I’ve spent the time feeling stressed out and guilty about letting my readers down. I’m in tears as I write this, because I hate to disappoint you — and to disappoint myself, as well. When something that used to bring me joy starts feeling like a job that I dread having to go to, though, it’s time for a change.
> 
> I am not abandoning this story. I do have one more chapter finished, but this seems like a better stopping place, so here is where I’ll pause. The rest of the story is outlined, and I trust that at some point I’ll feel excited about writing again. Until then, I leave you with my sincerest apologies. 
> 
> Your humble author,  
> ChrisCalledMeSweetie


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